How well do you understand the type of financial barriers that keep your employees awake at night as you and they adapt to the ‘new normal?'
HR teams know better than anyone that it’s important not to lose sight of how employees are feeling in the midst of COVID, furlough, job uncertainties, worries about loved ones and restrictions on contact with family and friends. The impact on wellbeing is worrying and, as yet, unquantifiable.
There's already a rise in the incidence of stress, anxiety and depression arising from the global pandemic and the economy has taken a battering. It’s not difficult to see why so many employees feel overwhelmed and anxious.
One of the biggest worries they have right now is their finances. And what happens when they're in financial difficulty?
When employees are worried about money, the worry manifests as lower productivity, higher absenteeism and increased conflict at work - all things that emphasise why financial wellness is a must-have employee benefit.
Holding it all together
These are the aspects of their finances that employees worry about most:
1. Paying unexpected bills
2. Paying off loans and credit cards
3. Paying utility bills
4. Not being able to pay their rent or mortgage
5. Falling into unmanageable debt
Then there's the additional pressure of trying to hold everything together at work, and for their families, while potentially juggling multiple debts and the prospect of financial hardship.
Managing money well can be tough at the best of times, but now more than ever, workers need help here - and employers are in pole position to help. By providing programmes and tools to educate and support them, they can be pivotal in leading their people to financial wellness.
There is much more information available now through charities, support agencies and online, so HR can help employees to learn about managing their finances and how to avoid or mitigate debt. They can also help employees learn how to save through payroll or create rainy day savings pots so they're better able to absorb financial shocks and enjoy life more.
How to overcome financial barriers
This is not just about financial education, though. HR teams also have a genuine opportunity to help change the financial wellness of employees for the better through practical interventions. Interventions that give control to the employees and empower them to take charge of their financial present and future.
Many of these practical interventions can be rolled up into one HMRC recognised payroll solution that can transform the way employees receive and manage their pay.
- Through combining financial education with practical support, financial wellbeing can be improved dramatically. Practical support includes:
- The facility to have wages paid into more than one bank account to make it easier to ring fence money for bills, savings and day to day living
- The option to create a bank account that’s linked to the payroll system
- The facility to access weekly salary advances through the month to help cover job related expenses
- The ability to create a personal budget and access helpful financial guidance
- The option to choose how, when and where to receive payment of bonuses, expenses and rewards
- The facility to split payments to landlords, loans and credit cards direct from wages – eliminating the risk of overspending before payment or missing important bills
- The ability to access online payslips through a payroll app so they have clear pay and deductions information information at their fingertips
- The ability to view pension information through PayCaptain's pension dashboard, seeing their future resilience build from their own and employer contributions
A different way of working
The smart technology used by PayCaptain's outsourced payroll provides all this and more. Its mission is to put people in control of their money by empowering them to manage it in the best possible way. PayCaptain uses innovative methods to help improve the financial wellbeing of employees and to reduce the financial stress they experience.
Additional PayCaptain payroll facilities include:
• Employers can boost employees’ savings by matching their savings payments (similar to pension matching) or paying interest on savings balances.
• Instant Payments (Faster Payments) of money to employees at any time 7 days a week, 365 days a year, freeing employers of the 3 days BACS deadline
• The use of the in-app PayCaptain AI powered payroll Chat Bot and employee payroll support helpline which is personalised to the employer to help with pay-related queries, enabling in house teams to focus on strategic tasks.
• The facility for employees to make charitable donations direct from gross wages to UK Charities and with the option for employers to match donations
This kind of help materially improves the relationship between employees and the HR and payroll teams – it’s no longer simply transactional but transformational, as employees begin to see the impact on their financial wellness of the tools their employers have provided.
And crucially, subjects such as debt and money worries become de-stigmatised. This too is an important step towards financial wellness.
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