Are you mapping your company’s employee benefits to reach financial wellbeing?

The reason we ask is because, despite the hard work that goes into assembling employee benefits, communicating their advantages and keeping them up to date, they are often seen as part of the furniture.

HR professionals surveyed for our latest workplace research have given us a number of insights into why this might be the case.

Sure, few of us ever resolve to spend a Saturday reviewing and comparing how much money our family will be paid should we be unfortunate enough to die while employed, small print and all.

The challenge, as we see it, is helping your people appreciate what they can call on without it turning into a thoroughly depressing exercise.

Part of this conundrum is the gap where the full picture should be. When our HR respondents were asked how happy they were with the support they offered for what is considered the premium employee benefit – pensions – the overall impression was less than clear-cut.

One in three (31%) were only “somewhat happy” which wasn’t that far away from “somewhat unhappy” on 24% and “unsure”, the same at 24%. Only just over one in ten (12%) were “very happy”.

Just one question from a wider survey, yes, but a revealing one. Incidentally, 54% said budget was a central consideration for any communications consultancy they may wish to take on. We’ll come to that.

Human resources teams are better informed than most when it comes to bringing to life what they have painstakingly put together, but is a reset required in the ‘every-penny-counts’ era? Especially when it comes to what’s generally reckoned to be the keystone employee benefit of a pension?

But isn’t this post (checks headline) supposed to be about that famously elusive subject, employee financial wellbeing or financial wellness, even financial health? Indeed it is, and the part employee benefits play goes to the heart of this subject.

As we see it, what you offer your workforce runs the risk of remaining distant and misunderstood when it really ought to be cherished for the way it stacks up in their favour.

Embedding communication helps to reach that desired state of mind and that means redefining what a benefit is.

Add-ons is the rather mechanistic label applied to supplementary features of the main benefits your organisation provides such as cycle to work sitting next to private medical insurance.

We think they’re more central than that. Helping people make sense of what demonstrates the value in which they are held by their employer is surely a win-win.

So along with the range of benefits you’d expect, we have developed a financial wellbeing box set to meet this need.

Available as a recorded, digital run-through, the modules can sit on your intranet or benefits platform or can be given as a tailored presentation in-person or online. Their development has been informed by the conversations we’ve enjoyed in four decades of advising HR leaders on employee benefits.

They cover the aspects of pensions and retiring which may be unfamiliar to both you and your colleagues, as well as financial planning for all ages, even down to buying a property and writing a Will. In short, the financial stepping stones most of us seek out.

You can order the whole series or select which specific themes work for your people.

Not so much add-on as fully on-board. If your goal is to make employees more interested in what their employer offers, this is a cost-effective yet effective and positive way to help them do so.

Take the first step to your employee financial wellbeing strategy today.