As an employer, it’s within your best interests to ensure your employees are healthy and happy. Many businesses have started to recognise the importance of employee wellbeing within the workplace, particularly financial wellbeing. However, did you know the financial wellbeing of your employees isn’t just a nice bonus to provide to your workers, but it could actually be a legal requirement too?
Here, we’ll look at the legal perspective of financial wellbeing in the workplace.
What are your legal responsibilities?
In terms of general financial wellbeing, you aren’t actually legally required to help your employees. However, there are a few financial aspects you are legally responsible for, such as employee pensions and ensuring your staff get paid on time.
It’s especially important to keep on top of changes to workplace pensions. Under the 2008 Pensions Act, employers were legally bound to contribute 2% to employee pension schemes up until April 2019 when it increased to 3%.
Although you aren’t legally required to look after your employee’s financial wellbeing, it is advisable to help where you can. It won’t just benefit your staff if you provide financial wellbeing services, it will also benefit the business too.
The benefits of focusing on employee financial wellbeing
By focusing on improving employee financial wellbeing, you’ll be helping your business too. Lowering financial anxiety in your employees will help to reduce sick leave and boost productivity. The less anxious and stressed your employees are, the more engaged they’re going to be, and this can really help to boost the reputation of your business too.
So, by offering financial wellbeing employee benefits, you’ll ultimately be helping both your company and your staff.
What types of financial wellbeing help should you provide?
So, now you know the benefits introducing employee financial wellbeing into the workplace can be, the question is how can you help? Regardless of your budget, there’s a lot of things you can do to help your workers with their finances.
It’s important to realise that there isn’t a “on size fits all” approach to financial wellness. Each employee will have differing needs, making it a challenge to introduce a solution to benefit everyone. So, you’ll need to focus on offering a variety of elements that are designed to help. Just some potential solutions include:
- Providing basic financial education
- Discount schemes
- Employee loans
- Contribute more to pensions
- Review wages
All of the above can really help to boost financial wellbeing in the workplace. If you do decide to provide financial education, it’s important to remember the risks involved. If you provide poor advice which makes your employees worse off, you could face legal issues. So, avoid giving in-depth advice and stick to the basics of money management.
Overall, you may not have significant legal responsibilities to look after your employee’s financial wellbeing, but it’s still worth doing what you can to help. Reducing financial troubles for your workers will ultimately benefit your business too.
