Developing your strategy
Creating a supportive environment
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Your strategy needs to be right for your company and your people. One size does not fit all. With so many providers and options, many companies can find developing a comprehensive financial wellbeing strategy overwhelming - it can be difficult to know where to draw the line between corporate and personal responsibility. Do you know what good looks like? When did you last review your offering?
Employer strategy
Looking at the strategic position of employers, there are some positives to reflect on. Around 1 in 3 feel they have a well-rounded strategy in place for each of these key areas. The highest of which is gender equality where 2 in 5 said they already have a well-rounded strategy in place.
Around half on average said their strategies need work or need starting – the highest of these are mental (56%) and financial health (57%). This shows a growing appetite to support employee’s wellbeing which is encouraging.
Employer Question: What level of strategy does your business currently have in place to support each of the following?
At an industry level, we see almost 3 in 4 organisations in Community and Support with a desire to build their financial wellbeing strategy and only 1 in 6 have a well-rounded strategy in place already. Contrasting this, almost 1 in 3 organisations in Administration and Professional Services have a well-rounded strategy in place and 2 in 5 need work or implementation.
Employer Question: Employers who feel their strategy to support employee financial health needs work or needs to be implemented - by industry grouping
Leisure, hospitality & entertainment – accommodation & food services inc. hospitality; arts, entertainment leisure; technology & communication
Admin & professional services – administration & support services; financial, insurance & legal services
Production & distribution – agriculture, forestry & fishing; manufacturing; professional, scientific & technical; transport, logistics & distribution; utilities
Community & support – community, public admin & defence; education; emergency services; human health & social work; religion; real estate
Retail & wholesale – wholesale trade; retail
The power of data
Organisations have a wealth of data available to them. The power of data really comes when you combine multiple sources to look at the bigger picture. It’s important to make sure that the statistics you’re using add value to your strategic decision making for the benefit of the organisation and workforce.
You may feel that the data you hold is not complete, is not robust, or won’t give you the insights you require. If this is the case, you can look to supplement in a number of ways including:
- Obtaining data from your existing benefit providers
- Running employee surveys to gain opinion, viewpoints or feelings
- Running small focus group sessions to discuss key topics
- Create a feedback mechanism to enable employee views to be heard
- Use external data sources to fill in any knowledge gaps.
Compiling all of this information together, analysing it appropriately and looking for areas of challenge or concern can really help shape your strategy.
Question: Employees who rated themselves as in crisis or vulnerable and cannot cope with their everyday finances
It is important that when looking at data and particularly averages that you ensure the data sample is relevant to your workforce as you could otherwise dilute or exaggerate an issue facing your workforce. In this example of employees in crisis or vulnerable with their day-to-day money management – the average shows almost 1 in 4 are in this category. When you look further you see a significant area of concern for those earning £70k to £80k where this rises to almost 2 in 3; and £90k to £100k where this is almost 3 in 5. When building your strategy to suit the average, you may miss groups of individuals who require more targeted and tailored support.
When comparing the impact of having different financial wellbeing support available, there is a consistent improvement in employees’ ability to manage finances in the short-term as well as feeling in control of their financial futures.
The purpose of this comparison is not to highlight which benefit has the biggest impact but rather to highlight that ensuring your workforce has access to a range of benefits will not only support your workforce with managing their finances in the short-term, but also helps them to feel in control of their financial future.
Impact of workplace benefits
LCP viewpoint
Gareth Goodram, Partner, LCP
For me, it’s important to keep your analysis simple (and without prejudice) to gain a “big picture view” of the situation at your organisation...
...It’s easy to make our own assumptions and conclusions before you start looking at data – this tends to lead to very specific questions and analysis to try and support that view.
The first table of analysis above highlights the importance of this principle. If we assume that most people who feel financially vulnerable are on low incomes, this could have caused the analysis to be concentrated on this group. However, as we see in the data, there is a significant area of concern with those with larger incomes.
It’s easy to think that complicated AI models might have the solutions you’re looking for, but most of the time your biggest insights will come from simple exploration of the data you already have.
Another practical piece of advice would be to ask your employees how they’re feeling (with a range of simple questions or survey). Employee data, without sentiments, can certainly help provide you with insights about benefit options and behaviours but it will do little to help you understand how people are actually feeling. It’s only when you start to combine multiple data sources (your employee data, survey data and the analysis of larger datasets such as the ONS and LCP’s survey data) that you begin to fully understand your employees - and what potential support they need.
These simple steps will go a long way to help improve and support the range of packages and education designed to fit your workforce needs and objectives.
The, final, “cherry on the cake” would be the use of AI and predictive models to help you implement preventative measures to support your employees when your data suggests an individual’s financial or mental wellbeing may be suffering.