What is financial wellbeing?

Financial wellbeing often refers to the current state of your financial health. Financial resilience incorporates more of a longer-term view of financial health and your ability to withstand future changes.

Where it all began… the Cost-of-Living Crisis

During times of prosperity, we tend to take certain things for granted. Like believing that as long as we receive a regular salary, we can put fuel in our car, feed our family, and pay our bills. The pandemic made us pause. It also made some people jobless, and the cost-of-living crisis set in just as the nation was returning to work.

Suddenly, those day-to-day expenses that many hadn’t previously given much thought to were at the front of our minds. Employers quickly realised salaries weren’t stretching far enough, issuing cost-of-living bonuses during Christmas 2022 to help alleviate the burden.

With many organisations unable to align pay increases with the rising cost of living, conversations turned towards more cost-effective employee benefits.

Once considered a perk of the job, employee benefits that could reduce the expense of everyday living, like our Employee Discounts Platform, became fundamental to making life more affordable during the cost-of-living crisis and beyond.

Money worries and Mental Health

Brits were cutting back on the things they enjoyed - the gym, socialising, and hobbies to afford the essential bills, like food and energy. Money worries cause financial anxiety, negatively impacting mental and physical health.

Our Money Mastery research reveals that 75% of employees often worry about money, with 26% worrying about it daily. 

Further explore the link between employee financial wellbeing and mental health in our blog, Creating a brighter tomorrow... financial wellbeing and mental wealth.

What is financial wellbeing? It’s ridding yourself of money worries today, tomorrow, and in years to come, as well as knowing where to turn when you need to talk.

Financial Education

Our Money Mastery reveals that 44% of employees believe their employer should offer financial education. Education is essential to financial wellbeing because it teaches employees to make better spending, saving and investing decisions.

What is financial wellbeing? It’s feeling confident that you know how to manage your money and can make informed financial decisions.

Making life affordable… Employee Benefits 

Traditionally, if people can’t afford to pay for something they can’t go without, their options are overdrafts, credit cards or loans. All are far from ideal, accruing interest and sometimes leading to a negative cycle of starting each month in debt.

Employee benefits can offer an alternative.

Employee Discounts… Reducing the cost of everyday living

In our blog, ‘Essential Savings for your employees, whenever, wherever!’ we explore the positive impact our Employee Discounts Platform can have on your employees when they embed it into their lives.

Let’s take the weekly shop as an example. A family of four spends an average of £129 weekly on the grocery shop. If they shopped with a retailer on our Employee Discounts Platform offering a 6.5% discount, they would save £8.38 per week, totalling £435.76 per year.

That’s just one area of essential spending. We can also offer your employees discounts on clothes, household items, tech, DIY, garden furniture, eating out, gifts and experiences… the list is endless!

What is financial wellbeing? It’s knowing that by using the employee benefits available, you can save enough in one year to cover the cost of just over three weeks of grocery shopping the next.

Employee Benefits as an Alternative to Credit Cards

Using credit cards can be beneficial. In our podcast - Your Financial Health Toolkit - award-winning financial advisor, Charlotte Walters, shares how she booked flights using only the points earned from using a credit card. There are some fantastic points and cashback deals available, but they’re only worth it if you keep on top of your repayments and avoid accruing interest on what you owe.

There are better ways for your employees to spread payments!

Take SmartPay. It’s our salary deduct scheme that allows your people to spread the cost of the things they need through weekly or monthly payments directly from their wages.

Think a broken washing machine, a new laptop, a DIY project or Christmas gifts… think SmartPay.

What is financial wellbeing? It’s knowing that you can spread the cost of high-end goods without amassing debts.

Earn Cashback without the Debt

Our Pluxee Card is a prepaid card powered by Visa that allows your employees to earn up to 15% cashback when they use it with one of our participating retailers.

We partner with over 80, including the UK’s favourite brands, so your people have many opportunities to earn while they shop. As a prepaid card, your employees can only spend the available balance, removing any risk of falling into debt. 

They top up with cash. You top up with employee rewards, helping them stretch their salaries further!

What is financial wellbeing? It’s earning cashback when you spend on the items you need that you can put towards the things that bring you joy without using credit.

Debt Consolidation as an Employee Benefit

When employees struggle to make ends meet, they risk creating multiple sources of debt. Debt is a cycle, and it's hard to break. Employees in trouble with debt often find their options limited, forcing them to turn to high-interest consolidation services.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

You can provide employees with a debt consolidation service with our Financial Wellbeing App. Help employees combine debts, turning them into one manageable payment they can spread through salary deductions.

Read our Debt Awareness Week blog - Employee money worries... Removing the stigma. Providing the solution - for a more detailed view of how you can support employees in debt.

What is financial wellbeing? It’s the peace of mind that comes from consolidating all your debts into manageable monthly repayments through your employer.

What about Financial Resilience?

We differentiated between financial wellbeing and financial resilience at the start, with resilience referring more to the ability to sustain your way of living should economic changes and challenges arise.

Throughout this blog, we’ve answered the question, ‘What is financial wellbeing?’ by exploring the different components that enhance it. There can be no financial resilience without financial wellbeing, and the various types of employee benefits available, from discounts to debt management, play a part in the bigger picture.

What is financial wellbeing? It’s something that’s within your remit to provide for your people, and Pluxee UK is the partner to help you make your support impactful. Contact us to discover how.