Supporting employees’ financial wellbeing

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hi everybody i'm gonna kick us off uh so everybody saying that they don't have sound yet it's because there was nothing to hear
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but now hopefully you have sound and hear me my name is katie jacobs from cipd i'd like to welcome you to the latest in
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our series of coronavirus webinars designed to help support people professionals to support their organizations
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through the pandemic today we're talking about an issue that i know has been on a lot of people professionals radar
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for some time but is coming into greater focus thanks to the impact of the pandemic
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and with christmas just around the corner sorry it's financial well-being how can
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employers support employees financial wellness during this challenging period joining me to discuss a great panel i'm
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joined by charles cotton charles is senior policy advisor for performance and reward at cipd
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carlene dowden regional partnerships manager at the money and pension service and sally hopper assistant director of
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hr at hertfordshire county council thank you all for joining us today i'm just going to run through the
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housekeeping the session is being recorded you will be able to access it afterwards we'll make it available
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from this afternoon the slides will also be available and i'd just like to flag that um we asked charles and carlene to slim
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their slides down a little bit or we'd never get through them all but there was so much brilliant information there that we're going to make the whole deck
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available to download so you'll be able to access some extra information that will not be coming in the presentation um to submit your
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questions and please do submit your questions during the webinar could i ask you to use the q a tab which
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you should be able to see at the bottom of your screen but feel free to use the chat function if you want to talk to
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other attendees or if you just want to share any points or comments remember that the cipd corona hub virus
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hub is there for you as a resource and that we are adding things to it all the time and for legal advice
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remember that the cipd members can call our hr inform helpline it's available 24
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7 and you will get an individual response from an employment lawyer so if you've got any tricky legal questions that you're struggling with right now
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then remember that is available to you and i also want to flag our wellbeing helpline for members
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in the uk and ireland with award-winning workplace wellbeing provider health assured we're now providing cipd members with
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free help and support via sessions with qualified therapists that you can take online or over the phone apparently
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this is self-care week so that is very appropriate to remember to take some time out to look after yourselves
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as you support others so on to our topic the impact of the pandemic has increased
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money worries for many working people with many households relying on a reduced income or facing higher bills
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we know from cipd research that financial well-being has been impacted according to our forthcoming reward
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management survey almost seven in ten organizations feel their employees financial wellbeing has got worse
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our research into the impact of covid on working lives also found many workers reported a fall in their
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financial security especially those who've been on furlough but even before the pandemic average
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worker pay has suffered since the 2008 financial crisis average uk
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employee earnings have not grown as fast as inflation and in real terms that means that the average worker is taking pay cut
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employee financial well-being has a real impact on productivity money worries impact employees ability
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to do their jobs which can lead to a vicious cycle with employers then struggling to make the productivity gains they need
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in order to enable pay rises across the board so what can people professionals do about it how can you go about creating a
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financial well-being strategy in challenging times that's what we're going to attempt to answer today over the next hour or so
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um first up charles is going to take us through some of the context he's going to talk about the impact on work and the responses hr could try
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then carlene will share the uk's strategy for financial well-being and a bit more information about what the money and pension service offers
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and then sally is going to offer some practical and contextualized insight into what her team have been doing to
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support employees in the public sector both before and after the correctness virus pandemic so that
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is it for me for now i will be back uh to run the q a but also to go between
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speakers but i'm going to hand over to charles to take us through his presentation thanks charles thank you very much katie
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for that introduction um so if you could move to the next slide please so i'm going to be talking
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um in my presentation about some research that the ci cipd has done looking at what the impact
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has been of covered in economic lock down on employees then i'll touch on um what the
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consequential consequences could be of those and then look at how organizations have
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been responding and how hr could um
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look at this issue and what they could do to improve employee financial well-being
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so the forthcoming reward management survey which hopefully should be out in february next year
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we did ask um the respondents to say what impact covid and the economic lockdown center
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had on their um on the finances of the organization and 80 said it was having a very negative effect
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and we also asked them to think well what impact could he be having on their employees and 68 said that um it was probably
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having a negative effect but we've also been looking at it from the employee perspective so if
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you look at the next slide please we have surveyed between april and august
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um just around 7400 employees and one of the questions we asked was about
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and their financial security had it improved or had it got worse and as you can see just over half of
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them said there had been no change in their financial security but 35 percent you know one in
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three over one in three said it had um got worse and only about 14 had said it had
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improved now if we kind of drill down into this um these figures a bit more so the next
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slide looks at it by furlough as katie mentioned you can see that those people who had been on
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furlough were far less likely to say that there had been no change in their financial security
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um only 38 that there had been no change compared to those who hadn't been on furlough that 61 and you
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can see um how many people um what the percentages
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how many people were saying how much worse it was for them or how slightly worse it was for them if
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they had been on furlough um another um way of analyzing the data
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if we look at the next slide is those who've um had a change in their
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caring responsibility so for instance during the lockdown many of them people working from home well having to
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look after children or possibly they had elder care responsibilities and you can see those people who had
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um changes in caring responsibilities were more likely to report that their financial security
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had deteriorated over this period and the next slide if we could look at
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that this was looking at it by
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the potential consequences for employees and this is based on some research we
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asked back in 2017 and the research indicated that those people who
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had money worries it could result in them feeling um tired because of lack of
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sleep worrying about money issues difficulty concentrating at work
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or perhaps spending work time dealing with financial problems and it could lead to poor physical and
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and mental health and around one in four workers who responded to our survey back then
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said that money concerns had affected the ability to do their job so we can only imagine
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that proportion may have deteriorated um since then so the next slide please and there are
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consequences not only as we've just seen for employees but also for society employers so we've seen an increase in
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the risk of use of food banks we've seen an increase in the risk of fraud especially pension
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scams unfortunately a rise in domestic abuse and economic abuse um an increase in poor
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mental health and of course that has impact then for the employers in terms of poor work place productivity
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um impacts on quality and service also difficulties in in terms of
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creativity and being innovative and ultimately on the bottom line
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so the next slide looks at how employers have been responding so far due to the during the pandemic and
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around a quarter of them that we had um surveyed were exploring how their people had been impacted financially by kobe 19
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and the economic crisis such as through surveys or exit interviews and another um 18 were planning to do
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this by march 21 and 12 um had or in the process of introducing
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a formal employee financial well-being policy um and that was on top of 31 percent
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already had um a policy but um as the next slide shows just under half of all respondents to
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our research didn't have a financial well-being policy and when we asked them why
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um it was kind of creating one wasn't seen as a priority right now and other more you know more common
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explanations also were the organizations saw the need but just didn't have the time or the money or the expertise to
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create one it wasn't sure if employees wanted it and it wasn't convinced that having one
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would help with employees uh well-being so the next slide looks at what hr can
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do so when are we asked back in 2017
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employees what was important to their financial well-being we had a long list but the four most
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common ones were earning a wage sufficiently enough so they could enjoy a reasonable lifestyle
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being able to save for the future and being rewarded for their efforts in a fair and consistent manner
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and being able to comfortably pay off existing debts and being paid enough
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and being paid fairly was something that was consistent across all demographics like age or gender etc
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so if you're going to focus on any two areas um i'd focus on paying people enough and
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paying people fairly now obviously paying a liveable wage especially to key workers is going to
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have cost implications so but if we can focus on improving employee productivity through
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job work and organizational redesign then greater productivity should flow
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which should help and pay for higher wages the next slide looks at
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it from a perspective in when we looked at the reward management survey this year we
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did ask a question about what the benefits of being a living wage employer were and it can
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bring benefits to organizations such as supporting the employer brand improving employee
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engagement supporting the customer brand reducing employee turnover and helping organizations uh bid for
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work now the next slide looks at issues around pay fairness i mean theory paying people
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fairly shouldn't um have cost implications for organizations but for many
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they're not starting with a clean sheet so the first thing many companies will need to do is to kind of
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put resources into or auditing legacy reward processes and outcomes to say well
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are there issues there when it comes to reward that we're unable to explain or
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justify so if you're going to start talking about fair pay you need to kind of put your order
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a house in order first similarly you're going to have to invest in communication skills especially if line managers are
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going to have a role talking about the reward offer and what people need to do to get it also
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um create a definition of what you mean by fair to help make and explain reward management decisions
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um the reward management survey for 2019 when we asked about this issue many
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companies um talked about pay fairness but actually hadn't got round to creating a
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definition uh yet also we need to invest in new systems
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in terms of you know how jobs are valued grades are created and people progressed
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and also investing in hr and our analytics capabilities so we've got the systems in place so we can
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work out whether we actually are paying people fairly and then my final slide
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looks at what hr could do quickly one easy win is to improve
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employee financial capability through access to either in-house financial awareness
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programs things like what benefit package you have an offer or how the pension scheme works which could help
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employees or sign posting people to sources of information help such as the money advice service which
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is a neat segue into uh um carleen who's the next speaker yeah
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yeah it's almost like we planned it thanks charles did really great conversation there
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um full of brilliant information as i said uh there were even more slides loads more information in there
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so those will be available to download after the session um please do get your questions in um throughout and i'll put them to the
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panel at the end do not do that thing where you'll put your questions in when there's five minutes to go and then there is no time
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to answer them and people get annoyed uh so i'm gonna hand over to carlene now uh to take us through her perspective
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hi uh welcome everyone and thank you to the cipd for inviting me along today um i have got a bit of an unstable
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connection today so if you lose my video don't worry hopefully you will still um hear my voice
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um so i'm going to build on some of the themes of charles's presentation in particular the link between financial
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well-being and employee productivity motivation and attendance um i'll briefly talk about the uk
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strategy for financial well-being and the fundamental role employees play in implementation
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and then provide some information on what maps can offer in terms of supporting your employees
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next slide please so who are maps maps are an online organization of dwp
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and we're funded through financial service levies and maps has brought together three
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legacy brands and some of which you may have heard of these are the money advice service the pension advisory service and pension
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wise and we're in the process of bringing together these brands under the umbrella of maps and also rebranding our b2c services as
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money helpers which will happen in the new year and we're the single biggest funder of debt advice in the uk funding partners
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such as ceb and step change and we also fund uh one-to-one pension advice for the over
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55s through pension wise um which pre-covert was done um
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um face-to-face and but it's now being done by um telephone appointments
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um the pension advice service is for anyone who wants to discuss pensions um at any time at any age and we also
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work closely with the treasury and financial conduct authority and run a number of different pilots
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and evaluation to test what works in support and financial capability and well-being okay so what is
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financial well-being um so i'm glad to see that what charles stated
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has been cited by employees in his presentation is the most elements of um important elements of
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financial well-being are very similar to what our own definition is and so we can show it on the next slide so
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how we define financial well-being is knowing you can pay the bills today can deal with the unexpected and on
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track for healthy financial um future if people have high financial well-being
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then they should be secure confident and empowered and every three years we carry out a
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financial well-being survey to measure well-being across the uk and the next survey is due out early
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next year and it'll be interesting to see what the results are and following the impact of covert
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so what this slide here shows is the current state of play in relation to financial well-being which is taking um from the
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fincap survey that i just mentioned i think what's important to bear in mind that the data on this slide is pre-covered
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and unfortunately but not unexpectedly where forecasts not the next thing cap survey results will be much bleaker
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and i think what's more important to bear in mind that financial well-being goes beyond helping people to make better financial decisions
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it's central to personal well-being and thus living a contented life according to these pre-covered
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figures this is the current state of um financial well-being in the uk which are poor numbers for a leading
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economic nation furthermore the poor state of our financial well-being has a real impact
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on the fabric of our communities and wider society the importance of society made up of
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individuals that can manage their money cannot be underestimated a financial healthy nation is good for
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individuals communities businesses and the economies i think one of the stark stats here is that 11.5
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million people in the uk have less than 100 pound savings as you can probably imagine that throws
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up a multitude of problems when faced with unexpected expenses such as a broken washing machine or even
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expected costs such as buying school uniforms when every um when every penny or
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of weekly or monthly income is accounted for so we can show the next slide
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so echo and what charles has said money worries are the biggest cause of stress for uk employees and damaging to businesses too
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the business case for support and financial well-being at work is compelling 94 of uk employees admit
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to worrying about money and of these 77 say that money worries impact them at
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work 69 of uk employers believe their
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employees job performance is negatively affected when they are under financial pressure
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and 62 percent of uk employees believe financial well-being to be the responsibility of the employer
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that's six and ten employees i always find that's quite a fascinating fact that actually that individuals are putting
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the illness on employers i'm not sure you know there's a great debate around that but it's interesting to see how
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many do you think it is the responsibility of the employer okay next slide please
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so 1.56 billion is the estimated cost of low financial well-being each year as a result of
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absenteeism and presentation the cost that poor financial well-being has on the uk economy includes 1.6 million
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employees taking time off work costing approximately 478 million
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and nearly 3 million employees struggling to focus at work at a cost of 516 million
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a recent oecd report showed that the uk has some of the lowest levels of financial well-being
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in response to trying to tackle the issue of poor financial well-being the government tasked maps with development
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strategy which i'm now going to briefly talk through
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so the national strategy and for financial well-being in development strategy it was quickly
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recognized that we would need to work with a wide range of stakeholders right across the country in order to deliver
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on the national targets set out within the strategy employers being one of the key stakeholders
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so the next slide shows um the 10-year strategy so which includes the national goals and
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as you will see there are five key pillars and agendas for change the first being financial foundations
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and this is really focused on two million more young people receiving some form of financial
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education we know that early intervention can have big impacts later on life on
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making financial decisions and that's why we've decided um to focus on children and young people as part of
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the strategy the second agenda for change nation of savers is focusing on increasing the
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amount of people saving by 2 million more by 2013 as i showed in the previous
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slide 11.5 million people currently have less than 100 pounds in savings which can cause huge issues and this
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links into the agenda for change around credit counts we're trying to reduce the amount of people by two million people
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relying on credit for everyday purchases what we know has been one of the biggest impacts on finances
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covet is people relying on credit for everyday purchases such as putting petrol in the car to get
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to work or take the children to school alongside using it for fuel within the house um and shopping weekly
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shopping et cetera what we're not saying is that all credit is bad but it has its uses and its
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purposes and relying on credit cards etc for everyday purchases is not a sensible financial decision
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the fourth agenda for change is around better debt advice and this is two million more people accessing debt
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advice currently people leave it approximately two years before seeking any form of formal
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debt advice by which time their financial situation is generally in dire states
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and it's much more difficult to resolve issues that they might have and then the last agenda for change is
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around future focus and this is um the national goal of five million more people understand enough to plan
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for later life there is a wealth of information out there but how people use and process that information varies considerably
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and what we do know is that we're at a cliff edge almost with people who have not made pension provision
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okay next slide please so what i just want to finish um briefly
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and quickly on is what maps can offer in terms of you as employers and support the financial
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well-being of your employees as i mentioned earlier in the presentation all our services and
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support are completely free of charge and also from government sources so all
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our resources are regularly updated to make sure that they include all the latest and guidance and information
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so this slide shows um briefly what we offer so we have a library of online articles and videos and we have
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thousands of these these are currently housed on the money advice service and they range from everything about you know what is a
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credit score and how can i reduce costs cash flow situation different types of mortgage a wealth of
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articles and videos and blogs that are all on that website that can be accessed and what they can also be used for is to
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syndicate on your own portals so for example if you have an intranet or a portal or an app that you use
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and with your employees all of that can be linked on and to your own or you can just share
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the links and we have a number of printed guides for you to share with your staff you can order up to 3 000 per organization on
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these and unfortunately the most popular guide at the moment is our redundancy um our redundancy booklet and we have a
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suite of guidance tools and calculators which people can put in their financial situation in money navigator tools are
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really popular one at the moment it's to calculate changes to income due to coverage and factors in things like
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um mortgage holidays credit card holidays and it gives an analysis at the end of that person's
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financial situation and then refers and signposts them to the appropriate person where they can seek support through different services and
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we offer free pension support bespoke appointments for the over 55s which are our appointments about their
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particular um situation and and of course we've got our customer guidance support via
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phone and web so if you go on our website it's got the telephone numbers of those services and if nothing else as
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an employer what i would be saying is that have these as a signpost and tool for your employees so that they can
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they do know where to go should they seek money and pensions advice and we also have a number of programs
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and pilots we run a number of valley valuations if you're interested in getting involved in any of those please do get in touch and we do offer
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maps and speakers for any um any events and things that you might be running but that is um
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subject to kind of availability and capacity and all this is supported by um a local
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regional partnership manager i'm actually the partnership manager for the north east but there are nine others of me across
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the country um which are shown on the next map a map on the next slide sorry oh no it's not it's the slide
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after i apologies we'll come to that in a bit um this slide briefly just shows all of
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the different types of topics that we cover so all those resources and tools and calculators that i mentioned
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these are the types of topics that they're on i haven't yet found a piece of um well i haven't identified any
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guidance that we've been asked for that we don't currently have although there's a couple that we're um doing updates to for example a section
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around apprenticeships and apprentices in relation and to covet thank you
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and this is the map i mentioned um all of these the email and contact details can be found on our employer page
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the link of which which is on the last slide so if you're looking to be linked to the person within your local region
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please get in touch and and on the left the last slide um at the bottom there that link will
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take you through and you'll be able to contact um those individuals and also that's the link to our employer page which has got further details
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of um ways of supporting you in developing a financial well-being strategy or the tools and uh and resources
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available through the money and pension service thank you thank you colleen and you've
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answered somebody's question which is uh can they access your services in scotland but the answer is yes
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and wheels island thank you so much that was a really brilliant overview and i'm
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sure um a lot of that information people will be jumping on um to um to offer their staff
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given that it's all free and available um i'd like to hand over to sally sally's just going to talk for a few minutes to give a bit of insight about
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what they've done at heart county council about why she thinks this is an important issue and kind of what's
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changed pre and post covid over to yourself so thank you katie for the chance to join and uh
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really good uh links into what i've got to say from charles and carlene so and pre-covered at harfordshire
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county council we had linked financial well-being very much to our overall wellbeing strategy
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and we saw it very much as a key part of our employee assistance program and we introduced um a salary
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finance scheme because we felt that that was very important as part of our offer and our education to
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the workforce on financial well-being and the salary finance scheme in essence um does provide
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opportunities for employees to make savings and it also provides opportunities for them to get loans
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and why we thought that was important because there's a lot of ethics around that before we made that decision but we
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thought it was important because we were very aware that on the high street payday loans are
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very very easy to access and very hard to pay off often so we were very keen to do
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a loan scheme so that employees could access loans that were not those high
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interest rates and that's something that's gone down very well and when you think about what carleen said about most people
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many people not having access to more than a hundred pounds um if the employee um has got a washing
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machine going wrong as carly mentioned that that's on their mind and that's a big deal for people if they haven't got the money to replace
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it so we saw our payday uh going away from the payday loans model stream more uh
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pay salary loans a better way of doing things and helping our staff we also can't do any of this on our own
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so we work very closely with the money advisory unit and the citizens advice bureau
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and we do signpost all of our staff to those agencies to help them to make sense of their financial
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well-being the sort of things we've also done is um katie mentioned christmas in her
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introduction and we have introduced a couple of years ago a platform where staff can save money
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anything from five pounds to 200 pounds a month towards christmas and that doesn't accrue interest for
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them but it does help them to plan for that expensive time of year for a lot of people and i think the other thing to mention
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as well is that um we we very much um have life-changing experiences all of us
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at times and this is seeking to help people through that because we do believe that there is obviously has already been mentioned
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this afternoon a very strong link between well-being financial well-being and mental health wellbeing
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and all of this is brought together on our hearts rewards platform which is an employee reward
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platform and the reason that platform is very important is it has become a one-stop shop
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for a number of things and on the platform staff can enjoy a range of discounts uh on
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shopping and this is really doing trying to do nothing more than making their money go
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a bit further and that's very favorable and just last year we reckoned that we saved
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employees cumulatively saved over a million pounds through savings through using hearts
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rewards so that sort of thing can help your employees to make their money go a bit further and should be welcomed
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and then when we think about post covid a constant part of our communications
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and employee engagement has paid attention to financial well-being we saw very early on that this is very
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important that we pay attention to that so every time we push our well-being message we also include a whole feature
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on financial well-being and what we've noticed um uh postcovid
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is we've become much more aware that our thoughts and our support to our employees go way beyond the employee
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because the employee's loved one family member or maybe someone they're renting with
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who they are depending on could have lost their job been furloughed facing redundancy
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and uncertainty so postcovid we have been very keen to start that conversation with our
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workforce to acknowledge that conversation and pay great attention to the fact that
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we see you know for our whole economy around us people are very much suffering at the
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moment and i think um the other thing to um sort of end on really from me is why
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does any of this matter will anyone on the court who cares about their employee well-being and i hope that's
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everyone on the call should also know that they can only do that if they pay attention to financial
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well-being because the two are intrinsically linked and also 30 of our staff
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in in hertfordshire county council are carers so charles mentioned the fact they can
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more adversely affect carers and we have more than 30 so it was worth
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paying attention to and then it is absolutely apparent to me that if somebody is worrying about money
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for the reasons that we've heard today they won't be focusing on their job so you won't be getting
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such a productive employee and it could affect their overall mood
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so these are all the reasons why within um harford county council we paid attention to financial well-being
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and it being so high up on our agenda so thank you katie
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so i've done the one thing that i always tell other people not to do which is remember to unmute yourself before you talk
32:26
but we didn't have any slides for sally but um perhaps somebody's just asked could you run through just very like
32:33
kind of point by point the various offerings so you've got loans employee reward platform are
32:38
there any kind of suppliers that you would recommend maybe you can just take us through them again yes so so there are other models
32:45
available but we use reward gateway for our um hearts rewards so we've got a platform
32:52
where all of our offers are on that platform for staff to access
32:57
we also have a christmas savings scheme which doesn't accrue interest we also
33:03
have a salary and finance partnership with loans available and also an
33:10
opportunity for employees to get financial advice um you know obviously regulated but
33:15
financial guidance and sign posting and also financial well-being and an
33:21
opportunity to save as well the other offer we've got is just constantly on the agenda so any
33:27
well-being message i send out it very rarely doesn't pay attention to finance and great easy quick wins signposting
33:35
people to where they might get help so organizations like carlene you know it's there this information is there all
33:41
the great resources carly mentioned signposting to people to that because they may not necessarily realize it
33:47
exists we've made it okay to talk about finance because as a society i think it's something we don't talk
33:53
about so hopefully um that's a bit of a run through but i'd be very happy to share more details and
33:59
that we can circulate perhaps thank you uh just one one more question about what you actually the practicalities and who
34:06
do you use for your christmas savings scheme uh so that's part of our hearts rewards platform
34:12
so we just take our payroll direct and we put it into um the platform and then you get it you
34:19
you save from january to um september and in october you get a nice surprise
34:25
brilliant thank you um great i'm going to come to q a if we've had a few um questions in please do keep submitting
34:31
them can i ask charles and colleen to unmute themselves so we don't end up with you doing what i just did and uh talking
34:36
while you're on mute um i got a question somebody um anna who says that she works with a relatively
34:41
young workforce in hospitality um and she references your work colleen and says max looks
34:47
great um do you have any recommendations specifically aimed at young people so perhaps if i put that to you first
34:53
colleen and then maybe charles and sally can come in on so sally i know you've got loads of apprentices [Music]
34:59
so there um we have a lot of resources once i would suggest there are too many to mention but some of the ones i would
35:06
suggest are around the kind of budgeting cash flow understanding my p slip
35:11
so i think what's really important is that employers are with diff people through different life stages you know whether that be buying
35:18
the first house or having their first baby etc but for young people i think it's often
35:23
the kind of um you know maybe they're one of their first jobs they got they've got their money there but actually then they're frittering it
35:30
away they're not even thinking about for the future because a pension just seems too far away so the ones i'd probably
35:35
recommend are under the kind of cash and budgeting which are ways of kind of um cutting back on cost
35:41
saving money prioritizing spending and then possibly ones around
35:46
um the kind of mortgages and property around preparing to save for a deposit for a
35:52
house or for a rental property and thinking about independent living so
35:57
when you buy a property you've got all of those costs that go alongside that in terms of um paying the bills et cetera so we've got a wealth of
36:04
articles and resources on that and as i just mentioned as well we are developing our resources around
36:10
um four apprentices so we recognize that actually many apprentices were furloughed
36:16
and eighty percent of a relatively low wage is an even lower wage and so we've got a lot of resources and
36:22
things that were in the pipeline to support apprentices so if you've got apprentices there's a there's going to be a unique section on that
36:28
also alongside for maybe those who have been graduates from universities of the stuff around kind of student finance and
36:34
paying off your loans and et cetera so yeah and if we've got what i can send out as well is we've got
36:41
a savior's trolling through the website we've got a spreadsheet with every one of our resources listed which we can share as well and
36:47
then you can kind of look to which ones might be appropriate i mean thank you and charles you aware
36:53
do people access different things at different life stages are there is there different kind of interests at different ages how
36:58
can employers engage younger people i think um i think there's a role for government to
37:05
begin with um to talk about employee financial well about financial well-being in schools
37:12
um colleges universities to help encourage um good saving habits um investment habits and
37:19
spending habits then um but given that isn't happening at the
37:24
moment so much um then there is an issue for government to talk sorry for employers to talk about well
37:30
once you start um your work this is a pay slip this is your income
37:36
this is why it kind of disappear you know get smaller and these are the benefits that an offer this is how you can actually um
37:45
use your money better you know through different types of spending options you could go through the organization and this is how you can
37:52
budget so yeah there's lots of great opportunities um for employers to engage with young
37:59
people i suppose there's issues around how they consume technology as well and how you attract their attention so things like
38:06
um apps and modelers will be quite important for this age group as well
38:12
and sally have you got any practical tips i know that you've got a lot of apprentices yeah i think the the practical tips i
38:19
could offer is uh talking about it i know it sounds very basic but starting the conversation
38:26
at a very early stage with with younger employees and because sometimes they wouldn't
38:33
necessarily see that as something they would naturally comfortably talk about but i think something they're about managing
38:39
your salary getting your first paycheck and knowing that that has to last till the next one and just
38:46
helping them through that to get some financial budgeting tips on is
38:51
is a good thing i think education is very important so i would always uh welcome anything that
38:57
we can do throughout the you know person's life from very early on to educate on financial
39:02
well-being because i think it does help i was talking to a young colleague not that long ago and talking about a rainy
39:08
day fund and they didn't kind of get what that meant at all so i think there are some things that
39:14
we take for granted that we know perhaps have as we go through our life experience of
39:19
managing our own budgets that younger people don't necessarily have had that opportunity to learn about
39:25
so i do think it is about signposts in them i do think it's about making their money go a bit further
39:31
so we have got an app for example for um our hearts rewards which was very
39:36
important in terms of engaging them and getting them to buy into that scheme
39:43
thank you and the question from philip he says we know that stress has a profound impact on an individual and even those
39:49
who tickle the boxes around financial well-being with savings still experience high levels of anxiety and stress given this is the case what
39:56
does everyone believe needs further action to promote a kind of more holistic approach
40:01
to financial well-being um charles can i put that to you first any thoughts well obviously um just focusing on
40:09
financial well-being and not on um other um factors that can reduce um people's
40:17
feelings of mental or physical well-being um is only gonna is only part of the
40:22
picture you've got to think about the whole thing um so i think it's important to
40:27
as philip has suggested to take a holistic approach and that kind of looking at all the
40:33
different kinds of stresses and strains that can arise not necessarily through
40:39
money issues but through work or outside home issues
40:46
at the home the research that the cipd commission back in 2017
40:52
that was conducted on our behalf by ies found that if you had um well not only
40:58
did money worries cause um mental stress but if you already had
41:04
um meant if you were suffering from mental stress anyway then you were more likely to make
41:10
poor financial decisions which then would create a negative feedback loop
41:15
so um talking about what sally had just mentioned about openness i think
41:22
organizations should also think about what they can do to de-stigmatize in their um organizations
41:28
um issues around money concerns and people feeling that you know that it's
41:34
they feel ashamed to talk about money or they feel that they're going to be judged and i think an opportunity for
41:41
organizations to focus online managers and encourage the line managers to have
41:46
conversations with their employees in a non-judgmental way and say well i'm not a financial expert but
41:53
these are where i would go to get more information and and support and that might include um hr
41:59
department as well and sally you've got a very holistic approach was that kind of a no-brainer or is it something that's developed over
42:05
time yeah i think it has developed over time for sure and i think it is something there around
42:13
being able to talk about it and thinking about what's going on externally outside of your organization
42:20
and thinking if that's going on externally there's a high chance that that's affecting my colleagues
42:25
so what can we do to open up the conversation and support them and i think that sometimes other things
42:32
can disrupt somebody's financial stability so i mentioned in my brief summary about
42:37
you know the wider context of their family or loved ones so i think it is people can very quickly
42:43
go from financial stability to financial instability so i think having um the the
42:51
on your agenda in terms of your employee offering is is is very important
42:57
um colleen can you offer advice on where to begin when developing a financial policy so
43:03
i'm charlene i said my organization is a small charity with very limited resources we've just launched our well-being
43:09
strategy which includes looking at what financial well-being so if you're a small organization just starting out on this journey you've
43:15
got any tips on how to set yourself up right yeah well firstly i would um it's a plug
43:20
here for the cipd because they've got two very helpful documents which are just on there it's developing around development financial
43:27
well-being strategy which can be applicable to any type of organization whether you be kind of a small charity or a big
43:33
corporate international so i would um i would look at those documents but in terms of a real starting point
43:39
i think it's around identifying the needs of your employees so what is it that what is
43:45
this something that they are interested in there's an appetite for being supported in and part of the problem with that
43:50
is what sally mentioned around that stigma around talking about money actually it was talk money last
43:55
talk money week last week and i don't know if anyone noticed that i've seen that but it was really uh provided platform to encourage people to
44:02
start talking about money um but yeah i would say identifying the needs of your employees and then looking at
44:09
developing some sort of program that that meets those needs and that doesn't need to be something that is
44:14
very resource intensive or costs a lot of money in fact there are lots of um organizations and resources and
44:20
providers out there that will come in and talk about things and yeah there's an offer for example from lots of financial services
44:27
many of which have gotten on kind of their interests hitting their csr responsibilities
44:32
rather than selling bank accounts so i would look at what's free and what's available out there and of course i'm going to say
44:38
this i would look at what resources we have available all those articles and blogs and a good starting point really
44:44
is raising awareness of what financial well-being is among staff so whether that be communicating through
44:50
your regular channels whether it's a weekly newsletter whether it's a on the shop floor or a board like you put
44:56
notices and things so i would start by maybe just thinking of things that might be
45:01
relevant now to people's circumstances so our money navigator tool is an excellent starting point
45:06
and for people starting that communication with employees to identify what they need and then building the program around
45:12
that thank you as a very comprehensive answer i will just ask charles if you've got any other advice on
45:18
where to start especially if you're a small organization with limited resources well the um carly was kind enough to
45:25
mention the cipd does have a resource um on its website and
45:30
um recently uh we supported the um the national forum as well um who also produced a report looking at
45:38
how small employers could think about introducing a financial world pr well-being programme um so yeah i'd i'd
45:45
recommend going to the cipd website and um looking at and looking at um the
45:51
the support we've got there um what i would say is that one of the challenges is trying to get
45:57
senior management buy-in um and there i think it can be more of a kind of a cultural thing
46:03
so you've got to kind of encourage your senior managers to put themselves in the shoes of people who are
46:09
facing financial difficulty or got poor financial well-being and hopefully once
46:15
they kind of start to understand um the experience the lived experience
46:20
then there may be more amenable i mean um you would hope that all the kind of the data that we've shown
46:26
and we've been talking about recently may um encourage them to go down this approach anyway but
46:33
often it can be the personal things that can also um to tip certain key
46:39
members of the senior management team to supporting this such initiatives well thank you i'm sure
46:44
the time has kind of never been more pertinent than it is right now really forgetting that buy-in
46:50
um has uh jennifer asks if anybody's got experience or knowledge of implementing
46:55
a platform like wage stream um so wage stream i believe is one where you can draw down your
47:00
gallery early before before it gets paid um what is your opinion on this type of offering so sally i know you mentioned
47:06
you've kind of worked for the ethical issues of allowing people to access money early perhaps um where did you how have
47:12
you found that experience and uh what what kind of challenges did you work through and getting getting to that point yeah so i haven't experienced wage
47:19
stream i'm afraid but when we thought about the loan scheme we were thinking through the the
47:26
challenges we were thinking through was the absolutely starting with the ethics of it balanced against the reality of the
47:33
high percentage loan rates that people can encounter through payday high street
47:39
loans and we had to do a lot of stakeholder engagement before we got approval to
47:44
introduce the loans for reasons i'm sure you'll understand and also bring the unions with us as to why this was a good idea so it was a long
47:52
you know it didn't happen overnight it did require quite a lot of um thought and consultation i would
47:59
i'm i would be a bit cautious about um drawing down the wage wages
48:05
because it could lead to a spiral of um detriment so that would need to be thought through carefully as well
48:12
and um when we got to think about the loans we one of our key considerations was the
48:19
risk for the for us you know who who does the risks it with and also the risk for the
48:24
employee would they be over stretching themselves and that's why when we procured the the provider um called
48:31
salary finance again others are available out there but they are called salary finance
48:37
we very much did that with great care to make sure that um we were really looking out for our
48:43
employees and not doing anything further to sort of potentially put them into peril when they already
48:49
having financial worries um but i do think that this was helpful because we
48:55
were seeing not a huge number but nonetheless employees asking for uh salary advice advances which i
49:02
suppose is similar to wage stream which we were consistently saying no to um and this way we felt it kind of
49:09
addressed that question that was emerging from employees that they could consider the loan instead
49:14
so i would always uh my advice would be is to listen to what colleen's saying about
49:20
accreditation you know going with the making sure you're going with the accredited bodies
49:27
and also think through um there get references on them you know do your research and make sure that
49:34
you're content that what they're bringing into your organization is uh do is the right thing for you
49:41
thank you and colleen do you or maps in general have views on those kind of tools because they are becoming quite
49:46
popular i'm hearing quite a lot of people using them or considering using them yeah so we we don't endorse
49:52
any kind of financial service or product um i think it's really down to the
49:58
individual organization you as sally said they thought about the ethics behind it their responsibility as an employer what
50:05
you know you need to take a judgment call on you know your staff best you know the demographics et cetera
50:11
had a conversation with them a big nhs trust recently on their kind of salary sacrifice scheme so
50:18
where they can now get people can get cars they can go to curries and get 52-inch tvs etc
50:24
and people can just come and request the salary sacrifice and what they now do is despite being a huge um employer they
50:31
look at in every individual request so they have someone come through wanting you know
50:36
additional credits to buy something from pc world as an impressive christmas present for their daughter yet they could see that
50:42
they were already having a huge proportion of their salary going out for other payments in terms of car payments etc and they
50:49
made the decision although it's a policy to have everyone to have access they made that decision
50:54
to not grant that and they had that sit-down conversation with that lady and said you know what is this the best decision to make you
51:01
you know if your financial situation so i think it is really kind of down with the organization to know
51:07
know their staff and it's not you know it's not about doing a credit check on your staff etc but it's about
51:12
being sensible and being responsible thank you um another question um from
51:18
melissa um given the disparity between the cost of accommodation in london and average starting salary
51:25
how can we really realistically help people with their financial well-being i mean charles that's a really great challenge
51:30
isn't it if you're working somewhere where the cost of living is very high is there anything realistically an
51:36
employer can do if the starting salary is not that high well it's interesting because earlier in
51:42
the lockdown people were talking about what would happen to things like london waiting if people could now work
51:48
from anywhere for an organization with these um beyond their way out and many
51:55
of the people who responded to our reward management survey they are looking at whether they still need to pay people
52:02
more to live in places like london and edinburgh which are more expensive because
52:07
actually they can work from from anywhere for those organizations that do need
52:13
people to be based and working in london i suppose such as hospital
52:18
hospitals schools etc then it's a case of what can they do to
52:25
help deal with the the cost of you know accommodation with the cost of
52:33
um travel um and another related cost now some of those
52:38
things you can do through um season ticket loans and helping to spread the cost there
52:44
and there's a big push at the moment to encourage people to use bikes as well so perhaps unsurprisingly our survey found
52:51
a big surge of organizations looking at the cycle to work scheme accommodation can be
52:59
harder i mean i know that some of the big um professional service firms tech firms
53:05
have bought accommodation um i suppose halls of residence for their
53:11
um for their new workers and their young workers who are starting out in their
53:16
career and providing them with accommodation um for a year or so and to get them um
53:22
set up but further further time i think the only way that organizations um can deal
53:29
with this um is through you know paying more money to to reflect the you know the higher um
53:37
costs of accommodation but also you know it's not just employers government also has a role and
53:45
they need to start thinking about what they can do to boost the availability of accommodation
53:51
in these areas um so people don't find that so much money
53:57
so much of their money is taken up by an accommodation and commuting costs thank you
54:04
um and this is something we were talking about earlier um in the prequel um and i know it's a bit
54:10
of a little bit of a hot and pretentious topic but we're getting a lot of um questions and i know a lot of hr teams are dealing with the fact that um
54:16
people working at home are asking for more contribution to stuff like uh perhaps not quite accommodation but
54:22
household bills uh heating broadband that kind of thing and sally as a practitioner
54:28
what has been your approach to to what more and you do an awful lot already but um
54:33
this was an inevitable question wasn't it as people from home neph coming up for what i think is nine months you know
54:41
in terms of the employee offer and the uh reward strategy and i think my response to this is
54:47
speaking in public sector context is look around look look out and beyond
54:53
at what's going on in the current economic position and lots of people are facing job
54:59
uncertainty redundancy maybe furlough with further uncertainty that that brings for
55:06
individuals and if we spend money on that in the public sector i'm speaking for then
55:12
are you giving allowances then what does that mean to where will that money come from you know
55:18
so i would encourage everybody to think about that because it could lead to other you know on the giving in one hand and
55:23
taking in another if we're not careful so i think that there's also been a very
55:29
uh emerging narrative on this with two sides really one is you know what allowances might we pay and the
55:37
other is um goodness me i've saved a lot of money working more remotely so you know one hasn't had
55:44
so much clothing costs or petrol costs and so i think you know overall i'm not sure
55:50
any research has been done on it but i think they kind of balance each other out so our intention and i think across the
55:57
public sector is we are you know absolutely up against it with continued um
56:02
financial pressures and we have to think of the public purse so our intention is not to make a move on
56:10
that but um also to ask everyone to think through
56:15
the the wider context of some of our colleagues and community members who are
56:20
perhaps without a job so we're trying to look at it in a more ethical manner
56:25
thank you i don't know charles are you aware that many organizations are taking a different approach or is it still too
56:31
early to tell well um it's probably um too early to tell but yeah we'll be looking at these
56:38
um trends and developments and reporting on them you know um as well as the implications
56:43
for practice thank you i am going to wrap it up there because i'm afraid we're out of time i'd
56:49
like to thank charles uh carlene and sally very much for joining us um this afternoon i'd like to thank you
56:54
all for watching and for those of you that put in some really thoughtful and interesting questions thanks very much for your engagement
57:00
um a reminder that this webinar will be available on demand uh from later today i think or possibly
57:06
tomorrow and also a reminder that you will be able to access the slides um and there's just so much great information
57:12
in that slide deck so do um look out for that on the cipd website soon um we don't
57:18
have a webinar next week we're going to be back on december the 3rd and in that session we're going to be looking at how employee employers can
57:25
support staff for the long haul especially those who might be suffering from the symptoms of long covid so we hope to see you then
57:33
but that is it from us for now have a great afternoon and we will see you next time
57:38
goodbye