Video tutorial: Facebook, Cisco, RBS Group and Mundipharma discuss financial wellbeing strategies

The panel were discussing the topics as part of the REBA FinWell Forum. They provided an honest overview of the challenges that they had faced in their financial wellbeing journeys within their businesses as well as how they had developed their strategies. The group included Mirka Slater, benefits manager at Facebook; Jim Cowan, head of benefits at RBS Group; Amanda Diston, director - international total rewards at Cisco International and Amy Goodwin, head of reward and wellbeing at Mundipharma.

“The financial wellbeing build is interesting in high-tech,” said Facebook’s Slater. “It does seem like a lot of things are needed. There’s a lot of collating information. Employees feel that information is complex and that’s where we are now. We are looking at what we have, does that work and is it working efficiently,” she said.

One of the biggest challenges is avoiding stigma, according to Cisco International's Diston. “That’s the stigma of ‘I have a financial difficulty. If I discuss it it’s going to look bad. I’d rather not do that at work.’ We’ve got to figure out how do we address that and get the right products and services that people will engage with,” she said.

At Mundipharma Goodwin said the biggest challenge she faced was addressing the breadth of types of employees the company had – from manufacturing to laboratory to sales staff.

RBS Group’s Cowan admitted that a few years ago the company had done well to introduce choice in benefits for its staff but hadn’t supplied the education to go with that. “What we perhaps didn’t invest enough time and money in was in the right type of education to ensure that when they made a choice it was a properly informed choice,” he said. The company introduced financial wellbeing a couple of years ago as a result.

This video was recorded at the REBA FinWell Forum, held in London on 7 March 2019.