According to a recent global PwC survey, 60% of full-time employees are stressed about their finances. This figure has increased since the pandemic. Even among employees earning $100,000 or more per year, nearly half 47% are stressed about their finances. What’s more, financial stress impacts a wide range of employee health and well-being areas from mental health to sleep to self-esteem and more.
Font: PwC’s 2023 Employee Financial Wellness Survey
When it comes to financial wellness, most businesses still hope that offering a free chat to a financial advisor via an Employee Assistance Programme will do the job. They don’t believe it’s their responsibility to help employees deal with personal financial matters. What most businesses still aren’t prepared to acknowledge is that financial worries impact employee productivity and motivation – that employees with financial worries are distracted and exhausted, and will even leave for the promise of a better salary.
Here’s the good news: people are willing to talk openly about money in the workplace if given a chance to do so. Hitachi Vantara runs a number of employee engagement programmes to offer employees genuine support around various topics. After an attempt to run a workshop with a pension provider, they decided to look for a more hands-on solution to get their employees talking about money.
The workshop was conducted in a hybrid manner, with employees attending virtually and in-person at Hitachi’s headquarters in London.
The theme was ‘Personal Financial Health Check’ with a list of six items to specifically look into.
- Financial goals
- Debt
- Budgeting
- Opportunity funds
- Their key number
- UK tax-efficient investments
Participants would evaluate their financial position with regard to each item. They would need to identify if they were on track in terms of saving and investing for their future in a tax-efficient way in the UK.
Thanks to the safe and open environment created by the organisers, attendees were able to talk comfortably about how they deal with their own money, and were able to safely open up about debt and their needs of learning to budget, save and invest.
Looking into the future
Following the initial workshop, Hitachi Vantara decided to run a series of regular sessions to assist their employees with savings and investments with the intention of:
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Enhancing employees’ understanding of personal finance
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Increasing employee engagement
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Empowering employees to make better financial decisions
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Providing tools and resources for effective budgeting and financial planning
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Fostering a culture of informed investment and savings decisions
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Improving overall financial wellness and reducing financial stress among employees
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About Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara is a true data company. Understanding how data enables mission-critical digital and industrial environments is what we do. We’ve been intersecting the worlds of IT and OT with data for over 60 years.
How do we do it? From developing intelligent data platforms, hybrid cloud infrastructures and digital consulting expertise, we power resilient digital processes, products and experiences that turn data-rich businesses into data-driven ones.
Companies around the world rely on our solutions for their digital transformation. We’re trusted by 85% of the Fortune 100. Guiding industries to boldly innovate for a brighter and more sustainable future is what inspires our next.
For more information, visit https://www.hitachivantara.com/
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About Master Your Finances
Master Your Finances helps to make money matters simple for everyone. This mission is guided by the principle that you are the best person to make decisions about your own personal finances.
Built on three central pillars of self-responsibility, simplicity and independence, Master Your Finances focuses on empowering people to save, manage and grow their money in the UK.
Through founder and managing director Leticia Fonseca, Master Your Finances has helped thousands of individuals master their finances through guidance on how to:
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Get out of debt
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Organise their finances and start budgeting
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Start investing in the UK
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Boost their retirement savings
Master Your Finances offers services and structures to suit a variety of needs:
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Personalised one-to-one financial wellbeing sessions
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On-demand money management courses
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Group workshops
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Group mentoring programmes to start investing in the stock market
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Financial wellbeing awareness seminars
Find more information at masteryourfinances.co.uk
