Video: Employee Wellness Conference: Why businesses are focusing more on financial wellness

Watch the 'How to improve financial wellness' presentation in full.

Speaking at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016 the company’s HR director Simon Mounsey said that he had a number of questions initially before introducing SalaryFinance’s debt consolidation product to its staff. “Is this the right thing morally to encourage lending. I think that’s a big question to answer. Our approach was we would not encourage any employees to take on new debt,” he said.

A six-week trial of the product across 600 of the company’s contact centre staff – typically those who suffered financial problems – has been a huge success, he said. “The results are very good and we are seeing a 6% take-up and that’s accelerating. The typical saving is around £500 per person and is making a really tangible difference for the participants involved,” he said.

The success means that the programme’s rollout has been accelerated further.

Asesh Sarkar, CEO of SalaryFinance, who was presenting with Mounsey at the conference, said that improving financial health was vital to improving both employee happiness and their productiveness at work. “If someone is financially unhealthy then each month they are spending more than they earn, have no buffer for additional spend or are working day to day but are not saving towards financial goals. They are also probably not as focussed as they could be – or as you would want,” he said.

Sarkar said that employers were increasingly recognising that they had a responsibility for helping their staff improve their financial health rather than its traditional status as a private affair. “Almost every employer we speak to does care,” he said.

This video was filmed at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016.