Measuring employee financial wellbeing is crucial for organisations seeking to improve employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall well-being. Research from PIB’s 2024 Wellbeing Revolution Report shows that a staggering 50% of corporate employers don’t have the data to make informed decisions on future employee benefit strategies.
Understanding employees’ financial situations provides valuable insights into their needs and allows employers to implement targeted support programs. To effectively measure financial wellbeing, organisations must start with choosing the appropriate data collection method.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to collect data from your employees:
- Ask employees via surveys
- Use a financial wellbeing solution provider
What's in this blog?
1. The challenge with employer-driven surveys
While surveys offer a seemingly straightforward approach to gathering employee feedback, they present several challenges, often resulting in superficial data that may not accurately reflect the underlying issues:
- Vague terminology: The concept of “financial wellbeing” is often unfamiliar to employees, leading to inconsistent interpretations and unreliable data
- Privacy concerns: Asking in-depth questions about personal finances can make employees hesitant to share sensitive information with their employer
- Limited understanding: Employees may lack knowledge about available financial support options, making it difficult to gauge their needs and preferences effectively
2. How financial wellbeing providers can help bridge the gap
Expertise:
Financial wellbeing providers bring a unique advantage with expertise in crafting effective survey questions that resonate with employees’ financial challenges and situations. This ensures employers receive maximum value from their investment, as the insights gained are accurate, rich and actionable.
Privacy:
A financial wellbeing solution that prioritises employee privacy is essential. Employees are often more comfortable using a reputable financial wellbeing platform than they are completing survey responses directly back to their employer.
Real-time insights:
Financial wellbeing providers can go way beyond traditional surveys, and collect quantitative, anonymised data through employees making use of money management and open banking/finance tools. These tools allow employers to get a range of insights on the real-time determinants of stress and wellbeing such as debt levels, saving habits, retirement readiness and future goals and aspirations. This data provides unparalleled insights into the support that employees need, and allows employers to tailor their benefit packages accordingly.
Personalisation:
Depending on the technology used, financial wellbeing providers may be able to integrate data collection straight into the solution, and adapt their interactions with each employee based on factors such as age, sex or income. This is really the cutting-edge of financial wellbeing:
- It takes the burden of data collection and outcome tracking completely off the employer
- It alleviates the employer from the responsibility of working out the best solution based on the data
- It ensures each employee gets tailored support that’s right for them
- It ensures a constantly learning and agile solution in place where data informs the solution and that solution constantly evolves
By adopting a data-driven approach to employee benefits, organisations can precisely target the support their workforce truly needs. This strategic approach maximises the impact of every benefit investment.
By leveraging a reliable platform, employers can confidently make informed decisions about employee benefits, freeing up valuable resources and ensuring that every investment delivers a meaningful impact.
3. What to think about when choosing a financial wellbeing solution
If you decide to go for a financial wellbeing provider, here are some considerations you can keep in mind to make the best choice:
- Check what kind of data they track – some providers only track outcomes, for example, the number of people that have attended a webinar or spoken to a coach – rather than quantitative metrics or actions.
- Check how they track and provide data over time – some providers will only give you an initial snapshot of the data at the time of onboarding as opposed to continuous data reports.
- Check the quality and quantity of data reporting you will receive – you can compare the reporting limitations of various providers and decide what works for your business. Key reporting mechanisms to consider would be analytics covering pension engagement, retirement readiness, benefit engagement and usage, coaching outcomes and demographic data, as a start.
Effectively measuring employee financial wellbeing is essential for organisations aiming to create a supportive work environment. While surveys offer a direct approach, their limitations in terms of data accuracy and employee comfort must be considered. Using a reputable financial wellbeing provider, that delivers on quality data and data-led insights, will provide a comprehensive and reliable solution to your challenges.
Whichever route you decide to go, it is crucial to evaluate the potential data tracking capabilities, reporting features, and ability to measure financial wellbeing over time. By carefully considering these factors, organisations can gather the necessary data to implement effective financial wellbeing initiatives.
