What should you and your company consider when it comes to Financial Wellbeing for your people?

As part of our collaborative partnership with The HR Dept we have created a guide for employers to look at the essentials, the basics and the extra mile when it comes to financial wellbeing for employees.

Scroll down to take a look at the guide below to establish what you're already doing, what others might be doing and how you could further support your people.

FinWELL Strategy & Policy Review

If you're interested in discussing a more detailed look at Financial Wellbeing for your company, we're now partnering with various Wellbeing Strategy Specialists that might be able to help.

    Submit Your Interest Here:
Next Steps...

Watch Nuz Chagan and Judith Grant talking about financial wellbeing strategies then read through our guide for employers and get in touch with our team if you’d like to explore ideas.

​They are available to share impartial insights and explore ways to implement or enhance your existing initiatives, link it to your overall wellbeing strategy and ensure a data driven, holistic, personalised, measurable and effective approach.
Nuz Chagan talks 'Financial Wellbeing Strategies' for Employers
Watch Dr Judith Grant on the need for a Financial Wellbeing Strategy in Construction

Your Financial Wellbeing Strategy

The Essentials...

A good place to start is by performing a quick review to establish what you already have in place and what else you could consider....
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  • Pay - Ensure your payment structures and levels are fair for the work that is being performed and at least in line with National Minimum and/or Living Wage legislation.
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  • Maximise Auto-enrolment Pension Contributions and Understanding - Mandatory pension auto-enrollment has been in place for several years now. This means that virtually all employees should be contributing to a pension to aid their long-term finances, with contributions topped up by you and the government. Is this set up in your business? Also identify if your people understand the importance and power of their pension with an idea about the basic investment options, risk levels, compound growth potential, how much they might need for a basic, comfortable or more desirable lifestyle in later life. Your existing pension provider should be able to help you with this.

  • Salary Sacrifice for Pension Contributions - Did you know that if you don't currently have your pension contributions set up via salary sacrifice then you could be missing out on a potential saving of up to £1,300 per employee, per year for the business and up to £600 per year for each employee.

  • Ensuring Payroll Processes are fit for purpose - Are you able to consistently pay your people on time and the correct amounts. Also consider the date and time of your pay runs and if it helps employees to pay their bills on time and be conducive to ongoing budgeting and planning.

  • Personal, Team and Company Wide Incentives - Could you incentivise and inspire your teams towards even better performance or productivity that helps them financially on a personal level as-well as the company's bottom line. Could this also improve recruitment and retention of talent and overall culture too?

  • Flexible Working Options - The increasing cost of commuting has created an additional chllenge since the days of forced working from home. Consider ways to utilise any time at the workplace and look at ways for people to travel together or save money on travel costs. 

The Basics...

Once you are sure you have got all the essentials right, there are some basics which most SME employers should be able to implement at no or low cost to themselves.
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  • Smashing the Stigma and Breaking the Taboo – Money and finances are topics that many people find difficult to open up about, and we all know bottling problems up leads to further stress. Within the confidence of one-to-one sessions, let them know that it is okay to talk about finances with you. FinWELL's first objective is to create psychologically safe spaces and a culture of care within the companies and clients we work with. This encourages employee and leadership teams to come together and #TalkAboutMoney making it less scary and also an opportunity to share ideas, relevant resources, hints and tips. We constantly talk about the fact that "we might all be in this cost of living storm but we're definitely not in the same boat".

    Some of us will sail through relatively unaffected which is fine but some of us are having to work harder in our rowing boats and some of us are drowning without life jackets. Financial Wellbeing is not exclusive to any age, income level, job role, family situation, level of confidence, experience or even additional challenges around neurodiversity and diverse cultures and backgrounds. For us, it's about bringing everyone together to recognise that we are all different and that we need to support each other.

  • Signposting to External Support – Building a library of external resources support can be very useful and it's important that you can signpost easily and effectively on an individual or communal basis. It's important for key people in your organisation to be able to do more than just say 'take a look at the intranet' but to have a deeper understanding of the resources and even some personal stories and life experiences to share if possible. These could include government websites like the Money and Pensions Service and debt charities like Step Change (who we partner with at FinWELL), and Citizens Advice.

  • Expenses – If your staff pay for business expenses themselves and then claim it back then check how quickly you are repaying them. Research from one payroll company found that a quarter of respondents struggled to pay their own essential bills while waiting for their reimbursement. Could you possibly switch from a monthly to fortnightly or even a weekly pay run?

The Extra Mile...

Not every employer will be able to do more than the essential or the basics.

However, if you do have some spare budget, want to help and recognise the investment in your business it could yield, here are some further ideas:
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  • Access to Financial Education, Guidance, Training & Support - This is where FinWELL comes in and can make a huge impact! The biggest external factor affecting stress, anxiety and mental wellbeing is our financial health and more and more leading employers are recognising this. We have wats to help your entire workforce understand, measure and improve financial wellbeing leading to healthier relationships with money and better mental health too. We do this through our simple four step FinWell PAWA Plans that can be delivered in-person, online or via a digital learning journey. This can give all employees a starting point to feel empowered to take action while giving employers a data-driven approach to financial wellbeing including access to educational content, interactive group workshops (in-person or online) covering 25+ topics and themes along employees career, life and financial journey, 1-1 support sessions and now financial health first aid campion and leadership training. It's important to be inclusive and try to offer a personalised, measurable and long-term approach to financial wellbeing as your people are all different and one size fits no-one.

  • Financial Health First Aid Champion & Leadership Training - Nothing improves engagement like getting the buy in from your leadership and management teams first. FinWELL have been asked to design and deliver Financial Health training similar to that of Mental Health training to upskill senior leaders, managers, wellbeing champions and mental health first aiders. ​Click here for more information.

  • Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). An EAP is popular employee benefit and it offers a range of support helplines to employees in crisis, giving them somewhere to turn to, whilst not pushing you out of your depth. It is important to regularly communicate the benefits of these tools and resources to ensure they are cost effective and utilised as much as possible.

  • Access to Financial and Legal Planning and Advice sessions - No one is really taught how to plan their finances in school, so can you could arrange for a local financial/legal experts to come in and go through the basics with your team offering 1-1 sessions around the advice process. The FinWELL Team are now working with a range of regulated and authorised providers who can be on hand should people need to understand the difference between education, guidance and advice and want to consider their options. Many professional advice firms will offer this service on a complimentary basis but be sure to do your due diligence and check they are regulated and authorised to give advice. IMPORTANT: FinWELL do not promote, endorse or recommend any regulated financial products, services or providers.

  • Offering Free Products - Consider offering specific products linked to specific employee demographics or areas of employee wellbeing such as menopause for example.

  • Adding New Perks to a Benefits Package - Employee benefits packages often include staff discounts for certain retailers and leisure activities like gym memberships. When was the last time you reviewed your employee benefits, asked employees what ones they are using or would like to see added? It's also important that these benefits are communicated effectively through a range of methods. This is where FinWELL can help as we re-enforce and signpost to existing employee benefits to maximise engagement and take up via our group workshops and 1-1 sessions.

  • Hardship Grants & Funds - Having a contingency budget to offer employees a short-term advance on wages if they suffer an acute financial crisis. Make sure it is all agreed in writing if you do this. This could be made available from the company or even via a fund that employees opt in to paying into on a regular basis. FinWELL have clients who have effectively implemented this and would be happy to share best practice.

  • Early access to wages - Make There are various providers out there who offer early access to wages to cover short-term emergencies, bills and budgeting challenges. This could possibly avoid employees opting for high interest loans but needs to be carefully considered if it is right for your people.

  • Pay Rises or Bonus Payments - Consider pay rises and bonuses if there is budget to do so sustainably and look at options on an individual, teams or company wide basis to maximise incentives.
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Want a more in depth review of your Financial Wellbeing Strategy & Policies?

If you would like to more comprehensive ​FinWELL Review and Analysis of your Financial Wellbeing Strategy then contact us as we are now collaborating with a range of external specialists.


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