12 April 2017 

Once a week insights, features and interviews for

HR professionals in hospitality

bites

Employee benefits successWhy financial education is the key to employee engagement

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

HR & HOSPITALITY BITES

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

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In the last issue we explored the relationship between

financial stress and ‘us’ as employees (and employers)

and looked at the benefits of a financial education

programme in the workplace.

As employers, we’ve known for many years how to support the physical wellbeing of our

teams, but it’s only within the last five years or so that the wellbeing focus has acknowledged

the significance that financial stress has on a person’s wellbeing, in and out of the workplace.

It’s not something that switches off. Financial stress is there all the time.

The UK Employee Benefits Trends Study 2017 by MetLife UK, which surveyed 301 employees

and 600 HR representatives and decision makers in the UK found that more than half (53%) of

employee respondents were interested in receiving financial counselling and more than a third

(39%) of employee respondents report that they are living from payday to payday.

Financial stress plays a huge part in productivity as it’s one of the biggest influencers in a

person’s emotional wellbeing and one of the key factors why that person’s not able to give you

the very best version of ‘them’ every day.

Financial education in the workplace, while it may seem like a

‘nice to offer’, it’s actually a great deal more than that. If you

choose not to do it, it may well cost you in terms of the

service your teams provide, how engaged they are and

ultimately, how productive and profitable you are as an

organisation.

Financial education benefits you both.

Understanding the

value of the

benefits

programme you

provide is what

engages your

employees and

empowers them to

get the most value

from what you offer

them.

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It’s also key to engaging your staff in your employee benefits

programme. Improving the financial awareness of your

employees enables them to make more informed decisions

about what benefits are right for them, and helps them to

build a package of benefits which really do work for them,

their lifestyle and their families, which ‘ups’ the value you

deliver to them as an employer and creates loyalty, increased

engagement, motivation and that all important word –

retention.

Understanding the value of the benefits programme you

provide is what engages your employees and empowers

them to get the most value from what you offer them and by

providing the education behind this, you not only create that

opportunity for understanding, you let them know that you

really do care about their wellbeing and that they’re valued.

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

We looked at some of the indicators which may make you want to consider whether you do need to

build a financial education programme in the last issue - these will help you to define your

objectives of the programme and shape your goals.: EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT

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FINANCIAL EDUCATION

• Your organisation is, or has gone through the auto-enrolment process

• You offer a defined-contribution benefit plan with a range of contribution and investment

options • You offer a share save or share incentive plan

• There is a low take-up of your benefit options

• Your staff focus more on salary rather than the full package of benefits you offer

• You have poor engagement generally with your teams

• Absentee-ism (especially stress related) is high

Source: Barclays Financial Well-being Infographic

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

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1. Social media at work

2. Social media at work

2. In an Instant

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

1. What are we doing this for again?

Building your financial education programme

Objectives - defining exactly what it is you want to achieve is

crucial, otherwise it all becomes ‘a nice thing to do because it’s a

nice thing to do’.

Why does your organisation need a financial education

programme? What needs do you want to address? Reducing

absenteeism or ‘presentee-ism’ related stress? Improving

understanding of the benefits you offer to increase engagement?

Providing your employees with tools to develop better money

management skills?

The only way to build a solid programme (which you can

evaluate) is to establish clear goals and objectives at the outset.

2. What does success look like?

Evaluation - when you’ve set your objectives, you should start

to build your evaluation process and gather your baseline data

which you will measure against once your financial education

programme launches.

Regular monitoring and evaluation is essential to build a

picture of what’s working, what’s not, what can be tweaked

and to establish whether or not you require any more resources

to run the programme.

3. Money, money, money!

Budget - you know what you want to do, but the way you’re

going to do it will be influenced mainly by one thing – how

much you’re able to invest in your programme. It doesn’t need

to cost the earth and it could be a case of reallocating some of

your employee benefits communications programme budget.

It’s also important at this stage to establish your internal

resource and the logistics of rolling out the programme – do

you need additional expertise, external suppliers or do you

have the capability and resource internally?

So where to start? You’ve established the need for a financial education programme, what next?

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

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1. Social media at work

2. Social media at work

2. In an Instant

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

4. All kinds of people

Building your financial education programme

Audience segmentation - your people are different ages, at

different stages in life and have different needs and wants. In fact,

by 2020 we will have the first ever four generation workforce.

Something huge to consider. One size never fits all and what

floats one person’s boat is an immediate turn off to another.

Segmenting your staff and establishing the different needs of

these segments is key to being able to develop clear messaging

that resonates within each of these groups and ultimately, for the

success of your programme.

6. The people who can make it fly or die…

Stakeholders - who do you need ‘buy in’ from internally to

make your programme ‘fly’ (and not die!)?

It’s important to bring your key stakeholders in as early as

possible and take them on the planning journey with you,

perhaps not all of them (you will most definitely not ever want

to do that…), but maybe you’ll have representation from senior

management in the project team and develop a mechanism for

feeding back progress and updates.

5. Calling in the experts

Consultants - if you use an external supplier, it’s important that

your teams become familiar with who that is, who they are and

what they do. People buy people after all and

your programme will have a much bigger impact if your teams

have developed trust in your supplier.

Many organisations say that the success of their financial

education and benefits programmes are down to the dedication

and enthusiasm of their external consultants and also the fact that

the messages communicated are seen to be more credible as

these people are independent.

Sometimes you can do it all yourself, sometimes it really does pay

to get the experts in.

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

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1. Social media at work

2. Social media at work

2. In an Instant

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

7. It’s not just what you say, it's how you say it

Building your financial education programme

Communication - how are you going to communicate the

different messages of the programme to your segmented internal

audiences? What methods are you going to use? What tools do

you have and what tools do you need?

Don’t be afraid to do some testing at this stage to make sure

you’re using the right communication tactics to target the right

people within your organisation. Talk to them, do some quick

surveys, find out what mediums are going to be most effective to

really make your programme fly!

9. The hook

Launch - what is going to be happening within the next year in

your organisation that you can ‘hook’ the launch of a financial

education programme to. It will launch far more effectively if it

has something to hang on, so look at what sort of financial

events or announcements are on the horizon within your

organisation that you can use as a platform to roll out your

programme.

8. What did you say again?

The messages - defining the messages you want to communicate,

be understood and prompt action is a hugely important part of

the planning process. The more meaning a message has to an

individual, the more likely they are to change their behaviour, so

this means looking at everything you’ve done so far –

understanding your staff needs, who they are and how they like

to communicate (and be communicated to), being clear about

your objectives and then building strong messages that will mean

something to each of your audience segments.

10. Roll it out

Delivery - plan your launch date and work your way backwards to build your timeline of

communication. This is the period when it’s going to be massively important to bring these key

stakeholders in to ‘champion’ your programme and start sowing the seeds. Be prepared for curiosity

and questions and make sure you and your team have the answers for them. This is the stage where

you can start to get buy in from your teams so building trust and confidence is crucial.

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4. Spread the love

DAM has supported a number of

organisations in the hospitality industry

to build and launch financial education

programmes and we’re delighted to

have been invited to share our

expertise as part of this year’s Caterer

HR Forum on 24 April.

The Forum will educate and inspire

people leaders working within the

hospitality sector – it’s a must attend

event for any HR professional working

in a restaurant, hotel or contract

catering business.

We hope to see you there!

The DAM Team