Finances don’t have to give your workforce a scare

For many people in the workplace, it can be finances that are giving staff an awful fright.

As a manager or a member of HR in any organisation, you work hard each day to ensure your staff are happy with life while they’re at work, but are we doing enough when factors from outside the office are affecting our staff?

There’s an age-old cliche in any business that many employees live by, and that’s ‘leave your problems at the door’, but for many, it’s just not that simple.

How financial stress impacts the workplace

Every day, financial worries play on the mind of employees across the country. It could be as trivial as not being able to afford that brand-new car, spending money on one cocktail too many over the weekend, or something more serious, like not being able to put food on the table for our children. But one worry that is starting to appear all too often amongst UK workers is how they’re going to survive after they retire, often fearing they’ll have to work forever to make ends meet.

No matter how serious or trivial the worry, pensions are something we cannot ignore, and something every HR team and manager should consider. After all, a report on the DNA of financial well-being, which looked at the impact of money worries for UK workers, found that 70% of the nation’s workforce waste a fifth of their time worrying about finances whilst at work – that’s a cost of £120.7 billion to the economy each year.

Stats also reveal even more worrying results for those of us in a position of authority and responsibility in the workplace, with 67% of employees feeling that their employer doesn’t care about their financial worries, and only 3% of UK workers would speak to a manager or member of the HR team if they were struggling financially.

How can HR and management help?

OK, we’re not going to pry into the lives of each and every one of our employees, but it’s worth making them aware that we’re there for them when finance is an issue. We’re probably all experienced financial requests such as pay rises and commission disputes, but we could significantly reduce our workforce’s worries if we were to put them at ease by answering any questions they have about pensions, too.

For more information on pensions and the options available to your staff, speak to a member of the Better With Money team today.