We’re currently in a challenging financial landscape, so for many people, quite a lot of stress comes with their financial situation. As an employer, you should be planning how you can support your workforce to reduce this financial stress and to support your employees better to make them feel more secure in their financial future. When you can offer this, their loyalty to you will increase, and therefore you will maintain a strong workforce as a result.
Regular Performance and Pay Reviews
First up we have regular performance and pay reviews, which should be an absolute minimum when it comes to supporting employees’ financial health. As well as competitive salaries helping with long term talent attraction and retention, it also shows your employees that you want to reward them for their hard work and what they do for the company. Many employees won’t go out of their way to ask for a pay increase without a review and may naturally just look elsewhere if they aren’t happy with their salary or feel they aren’t being rewarded.
So, make sure you schedule regular performance and pay reviews with your employees, to improve the satisfaction of your employees, help with their productivity and overall, help to improve their financial wellness as a result of their hard work.
Provide Good Pension Contributions
A significant cause of financial stress for many people is planning for the future. There is the constant battle of planning for the future or spending money on investments to focus on now. For people who are quite tight on money, often the future isn’t prioritised which causes distress for them. So, as an employer, you should help your employees plan for a comfortable retirement with strong pension contributions. The minimum that you can contribute is 3% of their salary, then the employee would usually contribute 5%, for an 8% tax free contribution each month.
Realistically, unless someone is on quite a significant amount of money, this won’t be enough for a comfortable lifestyle, especially with fewer people now owning their homes. So, we’d recommend upping the pension contribution that you give as much as possible for your employee and then encourage them to match the contribution if they can. You can also advise on other paths for contributions, like lifetime ISAs, to provide a well rounded retirement portfolio.
Help With Financial Planning
Another fantastic tool that you can provide for your employees is help with their financial planning. Providing guidance on budgeting, long term financial planning, investments (and broker scams that can occur with investments) and general financial advice can be really beneficial.
You could stay in touch with a reliable financial advisor as an employer, asking them to provide some guidance for employees. You could also pay them on a freelance basis a couple of times a month and employees could book a slot to have a chat and ask any questions that they might have.
There are also plenty of financial wellbeing e-learning platforms that could be circulated for people who would be interested. Going out of your way to show your employee that you care by helping them with their financial planning can really solidify a strong relationship between you.
Carefully Consider Your Benefits Package
Lastly, it’s important for you to consider your benefits package and offer flexibility with them. As well as offering competitive holiday pay, sick pay and health insurance, you should consider other ways to make your employees’ lives easier. Things like discounted childcare, payments towards hobbies like sports or the gym, paying for learning and development, good dental care, wellness programmes and family leave all make a big difference when it comes to giving employees that bit of extra room to live comfortably and not have to worry about those expenses coming out of their post-tax wages.
