Money and wellbeing – how can we support our workforce in a cost of living crisis?

Money and wellbeing – how can we support our workforce in a cost of living crisis?

The impact of the cost of living crisis and what we can do as responsible businesses – Our Director, Becci, explores some ideas and offers a few challenges…

 

I have just been hosting a virtual conversation with a group of managers from the health and care sector where Helen and I were exploring the subject of money and wellbeing. I can’t help but feel sad that this is a conversation we are having to have about supporting employees in the year 2022! I hold many opinions about why this is the case but I am going to keep my reflections to what we can practically do as employers to reduce the mental health and physical health challenges faced as a direct impact of financial distress. We spend a lot of time at Boo with customer organisations helping them to create healthy and happy workplaces – our Caring For Yourself and Caring For Your Teams programmes are having incredible impacts across those services and for those individuals participating – it’s something we are all really proud of.

However, no amount of online yoga classes or team step challenges can prevent the devasting impact of panic and anxiety associated with worrying about paying your bills or choosing whether to heat or eat! In my early teens and into my early 20s I faced a number of challenges that left me making some harsh choices on just this. Roll forward to the early years of self employment where I felt like I would never sleep again as a direct result of the constant fear that I couldn’t pay the bills and keep my family warm and fed. In fact, those gut wrenching experiences are the reason I choose to lead my organisation the way I do now…

I chose to become a Living wage employer because I want to support families, communities and our local economy to grow. Experiencing poverty at a young age is not only life changing but potentially life limiting (with loads of research out there on poor outcomes and lack of options which lead to major inequalities) and I am determined to do what I can to improve the situation that members of our community find themselves in.

We know money worries can have a huge impact on mental and physical health – there are so many studies and reports offering a range of statistics including Mental Health At Work . The CIPD, in their recent evidence review,  define financial distress as the poor state of wellbeing when people struggle with their current finances or feel insecure about their future finances.

So, given the terrible impacts on health and happiness levels, I thought I would pull together a bunch of useful tips that have been gathered from conversations, research and through my work as a Living Wage Champion and SME representative of the GM Living Wage City Region taskforce. Here goes…

1. Lobby for your company/organisation to become accredited real Living Wage employers
2. Check out Martin Lewis – Money Saving Expert’s cost of living survival kit which has 90 ways to save
3. Learn more about what your local credit union can do to support your workforce in terms of savings and loans
4. Set up a school uniform/clothing swap shop, launch a meal kits club, partner with local retailers/ market stalls to offer deals and on site offers
5. Reduce the costs of employment by providing refreshments, free parking, subsidised travel, pre paid expenses cards, access to washing facilities for uniforms
6. Create Money and Wellbeing champion roles and consider an employed role focused solely on staff financial wellbeing and support
7. Build financial wellbeing into your 1:1 conversations and wellbeing check ins with your colleagues
8. Offer weekly pay and/or guaranteed/living hours
9. Collaborate across organisational boundaries and localities – our employees are usually citizens of the communities we serve
10. Create a financial wellbeing section of your health and wellbeing strategy and build on it
11. Provide early payment of up front expenses or use top up expenses cards like Pleo which is what we use at Boo – this cuts the need for employees to spend their own money and await payment of expenses at the end of the month
12. Up your mileage allowances to reflect the soaring costs of fuel
13. Offer interest free employee crisis loans
14. Consider paying a lump sum cost of living payment to all employees

Let me know how you get on and if you come up with a solution to this complex and upsetting challenge then please don’t keep it to yourself!

Take care

Becci xx