Prioritising your employees’ financial wellbeing is important at any time of year, to help them thrive, productivity soar and your business succeed. However, this Halloween season, it’s a great time to take a look at how you can help your team side-step scary financial horrors and avoid sleepless nights due to money worries, with just seven straightforward strategies.
While we can highlight the importance of helping your employees steer clear of hair-raising money issues this Halloween, it is vital that you look after their financial wellbeing throughout the year. Otherwise, if they are financially stressed, it will impact every aspect of their overall wellbeing – including their mental, physical and social wellbeing. Consequently, it could also affect their engagement in the workplace and, ultimately, your business productivity. Indeed, research in 2023 by Mintago revealed that, with regards to financial wellbeing, 49% of employees said that stress and anxiety harmed their performance at work. In fact, it was found that financially stressed workers were almost five times more likely to admit personal finance issues had been a distraction to them at work, and among such employees, 36% were likely to be seeking a new job. Similarly, a 2023 survey by PwC found that financially stressed employees tend to be more distracted, less engaged and more likely to seek another job.
Moreover, this Halloween, ghosts and ghouls are not the only things that could give your employees sleepless nights, as our research has also found that 43% of UK adults said they had lost sleep due to financial concerns, and 56% of respondents in the PwC survey said that money worries had had a negative impact on their sleep. While this is obviously distressing for the individuals involved, the ripple effect of this is that it could also impact the productivity of your business, as a study by the University of South Florida found that losing as little as 16 minutes of sleep a night can make the difference between having a good or a bad day at work.
So, try implementing the following five tactics to keep your employees safe and sound from money nightmares this trick-or-treat season:
1. Assess your employees’ financial wellbeing needs
To make sure you offer the right support to protect your staff from financial terrors, this Halloween, it is a good idea to assess exactly what their needs are. The best way to do this is to actually ask your employees about their financial wellbeing, but although this sounds logical, it is often not done, as research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that only 20% of companies actually carry this out at least once a year.
You can easily do this by sending out an anonymised survey to your employees, to learn exactly what financial wellbeing support they may require and identify any issues they could be dealing with. However, it is essential that you explain to them why you are conducting the survey and emphasise that their responses will be totally anonymous and treated confidentially. To be completely transparent, you should also share a summary of the findings with them, and commit to addressing any requirements identified, to gain their trust.
Once you have done this, you should have a better idea of any challenges that you need to address, and can assess whether the wellbeing strategies you have in place are sufficient, or whether you should introduce new measures to support your staff.
2. Beat money talk taboos and improve financial wellbeing
If you want to keep your staff safe from financial frights this Halloween, then encouraging them to talk about their finances openly is also a great way to do this. Although this is important, to ensure you can provide help where it is needed, it may not be easy at first, as talking about money matters at work has long been regarded as a taboo. Indeed, Mintago research in 2022 found that only two-fifths of UK adults surveyed had spoken to their friends, family or colleagues about their money worries.
However, by reassuring your employees and making it clear there is no shame in discussing money issues, you can beat these taboos. You could also provide a safe space for your staff to discuss financial concerns, without being embarrassed. In addition, you might find the annual Talk Money Week event, run by the Money & Pensions Service each November, a good way to highlight to your staff the need for open conversations, and a helpful source of information.
3. Provide great education
Educating your employees in good financial practices is possibly the most powerful way you can help them avoid the horrors of money mistakes and boost their financial wellbeing. This is increasingly being seen as essential in the business world, with research by Gartner showing that six in 10 (60%) of employers now offer financial education classes to their employees. This can help your staff build their financial literacy, become more financially proficient and navigate the world of money better.
This is especially important, as a recent study found that nearly three-quarters of Brits struggle with financial literacy, as only 27% of participants could actually pass a money literacy test. So, enabling your employees to gain the skills they need can save them from hair-raising financial pitfalls. You can achieve this by providing helpful resources, such as a library of learning materials, regular online masterclasses and interactive workshops, which you can easily make available via a straightforward financial wellbeing platform, like Mintago. In this way, by empowering your workers with knowledge, you can help them sleep better at night and arm them against money nightmares.
4. Help your employees avoid debt
Out-of-control debt is most definitely a money horror to avoid, so you can boost your employees’ financial wellbeing by enabling them to steer clear of this issue. One way to do this is to help them budget better, by getting them to list their essential expenses, such as rent or mortgage, food bills, utility bills and council tax, to enable them to keep track of their outgoings and stay within budget. You can also supply your staff with online budgeting tools, such as those on the Mintago platform, that will help them keep out of debt and achieve their financial goals.
However, some of your staff may already be struggling with debt, so you could also improve their situation by providing access to a debt management service. This can help them gain back control of their finances, by organising a manageable repayment plan, which could not only lift their morale, but raise their productivity in the workplace too.
5. Supply access to expert advice to improve employee financial wellbeing
It is also a great idea to provide your employees with free access to expert financial advisers, to help them avoid any individual money nightmares they might have this Halloween. A one-size-fits-all solution is not an effective answer where financial wellbeing is concerned, and in this way, they can get the bespoke assistance they need, discuss their unique financial requirements and find the answers they are seeking.
This can be extremely helpful, as an expert financial adviser can guide your employees through any challenging financial decisions they need to make and help them create a plan to meet their individual goals. Whether they are planning to purchase a property, or budgeting for children, their individual financial aims will vary according to their different life stages. So, with this tailored assistance they can gain peace of mind and avoid sleepless nights from their own personal money worries.
6. Plan for the future
It is essential that you help your employees effectively plan for retirement, to ensure they have long-term financial wellbeing. Failure to financially plan for the future could haunt your staff with big money worries unless it is sorted out. In fact, uncertainty regarding future finances can create significant stress, and recent research has revealed that those who plan for the future are three times more positive about their finances than those who do not. It is therefore important that you offer your staff a good pension plan. For example, you could consider providing a more tax-efficient salary sacrifice pension scheme that can save your business and your employees money.
You can also help your staff achieve pension wellbeing and avoid shocking long-term financial horrors this Halloween, by enabling them to locate lost pension pots from previous jobs, which could substantially boost their retirement savings. With the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) reporting that there are 2.8 billion pension pots that are considered lost, at a value of £26.6 million, this will no doubt help many of your employees. You can achieve this by providing access to a straightforward service, such as Mintago’s Pension Hunter tool, that can easily locate these funds with minimal details from users.
In addition, to keep your staff safe from pension nightmares, you could offer them a service that enables them to consolidate their various pensions, to make managing them straightforward, such as that available via the Mintago platform.
7. Make it easy
Making it easy for your employees to take control of their finances is key if you want to improve their financial wellbeing and help them avoid money horrors this Halloween. With your staff working hard, if they have to dedicate a great deal of time and effort to finding the financial help and guidance they need, they may not get around to doing this. It is therefore essential that you make it as straightforward as possible for your team to take control of their finances. You can achieve this by providing a comprehensive financial wellbeing platform, such as Mintago, that will allow them to access all the assistance they need in one place. From managing their pensions, to accessing expert financial advice, making savings on vital products and services, and getting budgeting and debt assistance, all at their fingertips, this will enable them to achieve great financial wellbeing this Halloween, and all year round.
The takeaway: Improve employee financial wellbeing
So, by implementing these seven simple strategies, you can easily save your employees from the horror of financial chaos this Halloween and ensure they are fully productive to help your business succeed. To discover more about how Mintago can help your team and business to prosper, contact us today.