Financial education – helping your employees to understand their benefits and finances

One of the challenges for employers offering employee benefits is ensuring that employees understand exactly what it is on offer. In its most basic form, financial education can help employees to understand the value of their employee benefits such as pensions and share schemes, but taken a step further, employers can also help staff to make sensible decisions about their personal money and investments – a worthwhile benefit in itself.
 
By providing workplace workshops or seminars that offer clear information, employers can take a step towards making sure that employees have a better understanding of their financial situation.
 
Not only can staff better calculate the impact of decisions they make about particular benefits, (which could include deciding on pension contribution levels or selecting certain options in a flexible benefits scheme), but if a company so chooses, they can also help their employees deal with personal financial issues, such as mortgages and personal debt management, which can do a great deal to reduce employees' stress levels which will of course often have a positive effect on performance.
 
According to recent research published by the Institute for Employment Studies, 30% of employees are concerned about their financial wellbeing and worryingly, more than a quarter of workers do not feel in control of their finances and believe their financial worries are affecting their performance at work.
 
The ‘Financial Wellbeing in the Workplace’ report, which surveyed over 1,900 UK employees also revealed that only a third of workers felt positive about their financial future and less than one-third of respondents thought they would have sufficient savings for retirement.
 
But for those employees who did have access to financial education programmes run by their place of work, just 15% had made use of them. This means that while many companies would benefit from putting these services in place, it’s also important to make sure that employees are aware of the services on offer, and are making best use of that service.

Helping an employee to feel in control of their finances can have a significant effect on performance and in times of financial difficulty can be one of the most relevant employee benefits a company can offer.

Oval Financial Services has a specialist Employee Benefits division and can offer advice and guidance on issues surrounding financial education, both in relation to company benefits and personal financial matters. Oval can also advise on how best to help employees make the most of this service.

For more information, please contact William Johnson on
0115 937 1325 or email william.johnson@theovalgroup.com