Improving Financial Wellbeing
Strategies for managing stress in the workplace by improving financial wellbeing
During these unprecedented times, the work of an HR professional is extra important. You want to keep supporting your staff, but which is the way forward? Employees are feeling pressure from so many directions. Sources of worry could be anything from health issues, financial struggles, remote working problems, anxieties about older relations, or all of these. We’ve highlighted some effective strategies that focus on managing one common stressor in the workplace: financial stress:
1. Know what poor mental health looks like
2. Create or improve your communications strategy
3. Help your people have financial agency
4. Embrace technology
We’re in a mental health emergency
You’ll already know that the COVID-19 has kicked off a mental health emergency in the UK, but even before the pandemic, mental health related absence was the most common cause of long-term sickness absence in UK workplaces. Recent MIND research has reported that more than half of adults (60%) and over two thirds of young people (68%) report that their mental health got worse during lockdown. Another recent report suggests that a quarter of workers report that money worries have affected their ability to do their job. So it makes sense to focus your efforts on finding strategies to manage your team’s levels of stress through improving their financial wellbeing - and not just because it’s the right thing to do.
High levels of financial anxiety impact the bottom line in very real ways. When your employees’ financial stress levels are high, you’ll be leaking money through higher levels of sickness, absenteeism, turnover and through lower levels of productivity, innovation and motivation. And, of course, employers have a duty by law to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of their people, and that includes mental health.
What you can do
Money and mental health are linked. People with poor mental health can find it hard to manage money, and worrying about money can make mental health poorer. There’s a clear relationship between high levels of financial stress and reduced mental wellbeing. You’ve probably suffered money worries yourself at some time in your life, and you’ll know that it’s no fun at all. So, if you focus your energy on soothing your staff’s money worries, you can have a positive effect on their mental health - and that’s got to be good, hasn’t it?
Yes, it’ll mean new skills, some different conversations and embracing technology, but when have you ever shied away from a challenge? Here are three ways to get started:
Know what poor mental health looks like
To know if you have a problem, you need to know your people. The signs that they are suffering poor mental health can be physical, psychological or behavioural. At work, these might play out as:
● Higher levels of sickness and absenteeism
● Work taking longer
● Risk-taking or resigned attitudes
● Poor performance
● Increased conflict, irritability or withdrawal
● Working longer hours
Make the decision to proactively look out for the signs of poor mental health, and brief your managers to do likewise. If you spot someone who you suspect might be in distress, try opening a conversation with:
● How are you?
● How are you feeling?
● I’ve noticed that you’re not as lively as usual. Is there something bothering you?
● What challenges are you facing right now?
● I’m here to support you. How can I help?
Make sure that you signpost your staff to external mental health resources to contact if they’re feeling totally wretched.
Open up conversations about finances in all your internal comms, including team-meetings.
Don’t forget unions. If your staff are union members, team up with their union to help support them.
Create or improve your communications strategy
Ensure that financial wellbeing is a key part of your communications strategy. Make sure that it includes:
● Strong messages to all staff that their financial wellbeing is important, and that you’re taking steps to support it.
● Regular and honest information about job security. Be transparent about job issues. With millions of businesses affected and an uncertain future ahead, job insecurity in the time of COVID is likely to be a major stressor for your staff. Not knowing their future can create a spiral of anxiety about finances. It’s time for clarity. If you can promise no job losses, communicate that. If you’re not sure yet, communicate that, too. If staff know that they’ll be updated about what’s happening in the business, they will feel that they can trust you.
● A way for your staff to let you know they need help, or how they’d like to proactively work on their own financial wellbeing. You may already have a suitable communications channel, such as through a company intranet, line managers or team meetings.
● A promise to update staff as the environment changes - and keep that promise.
● Monthly campaigns that focus on common financial issues. Be as informal as you can get away with. Your overall “Get Your Finances Sorted” campaign could include “Get Out of Debt This Year”, “Get That Savings Habit” , “Cut Those Damn Household Bills”, and take part in them yourself. Yes, even HR professionals like you need to get that savings habit.
Help your people have financial agency
When people feel that they have agency - more control over their lives, and more decision-making power - they feel less stressed and their mental health improves. Better financial agency will decrease your team’s financial stress, and improve their mental health. One way to improve financial agency is to provide them with a financial wellbeing programme which can include a whole range of resources such as:
● Online resources and planners to help them manage their salary, budgeting, coping with debt, saving and planning for retirement.
● Workshops and one-to-one financial coaching.
● Free access to independent financial advisers.
● Information about how to manage and top-up their workplace pension. Get in touch with your pension providers to check what extra support they provide.
Don’t forget to give people the time and space to get on top of their finances.
Your people will be at different stages of their lives - some just starting out, some with young families or kids at university, and some heading for retirement. Each will have different needs and worries. Your financial wellbeing programme shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. But a proactive, forward-thinking approach is appropriate for everyone, so keep those conversations going.
Embrace technology
Work smarter not harder by introducing as much cool technology into your financial wellbeing programme as possible. Your young staff are digital natives - they’ll take to it naturally. Older staff might need a little bit of hand-holding to start with. Check out things like:
● Webinars, video, podcasts and mobile training courses for financial education.
● Free online budget planners and debt-test calculators.
● Budgeting apps like Squirrel, which can help your staff budget for bills and save for goals.
● Top-up apps like Flexearn (ahem, that’s us) that help your staff with a little advance on salary, reducing their likelihood of using dangerous payday loans.
● Savings apps like Chip or Tandem that help staff automate savings.
During these oh-so-difficult times, HR can show its true, people-championing power by supporting people’s financial agency in so many different ways: through proactive and authentic communications, through education and resources, and by getting smart with technology. And that’s just to start with.
Want to support your staff further? Empower them with FlexEarn’s financial wellbeing app which helps people to proactively manage their finances. It’s easy to implement and doesn’t cost you a penny. Find out more today.