Festival time. Why not stage one devoted to financial wellbeing?

Festival season is upon us.

Of work, that is. Sorry to disappoint those expecting to read about excited anticipation for Glastonbury or Latitude.

We’ll be at the Festival of Work in London from Wednesday June 7^th where we will join the throng of exhibitors.

How do we stand out from the hundreds of other consultancies and companies promoting their services to the HR world, you may well ask.

For us, it’s a chance to continue the conversation we’re holding with the professional teams shaping the UK’s workforce which is striving to deliver amid increasingly challenging times.

Our latest survey found financial wellbeing was very much on the minds of HR professionals. What is it? How does it apply to us? What can we do to make it tangible and productive?

We’ll be sharing the headlines and highlights of what you told us while we’re there – please do drop by - and wanted to use this post to consider one or two findings.

What did please us was the time taken to offer comments and thoughts – 60-odd pages, to be precise, from more than 1,000 respondents.

By itself, this suggested financial wellness was something with which you were actively engaging, instead of tick-boxing.

Another area which caught our eye was the recognition that while financial health can simplistically be measured in pounds and pence, helping employees understand the value is very much linked to words and deeds.

Also, communicating what employee benefits mean in visible terms is a vital element to help people appreciate what their employer is making available.

For example, more than half (51 per cent), offered no support beyond contributing into the company pension scheme.

While just under a third (31 per cent) did offer access to help, 12 per cent paid for their people to receive some form of financial or retirement guidance.

Even so, one in four were unsure as to how this support was received.

Clearly, we can offer some pointers, given our decades-long experience advising hundreds of companies on not only their employee benefits but also how your people can make the most of them.

One immediate tool we have developed is a financial wellbeing box set to help your workforce, at whatever stage they’ve reached, to grasp more firmly what they can do to help themselves. From tax and budgeting to pensions and inheritance, we’ve designed it to be accessible and practical.

Like any festival, there will be stands competing for your attention. We can humbly offer our research insights and this off-the-shelf, ready-to-go aid, as well as the wealth of our consulting experience.

Ok, it may not be glow sticks and Coldplay but, ultimately, financial wellbeing is related to performance. For most of us, that’s the main attraction.