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🌟 Nurturing Comprehensive Financial Wellbeing: A United Approach 🌟 Today, I would like to delve into a topic that holds immense importance - financial wellbeing. In companies this should not be responsibility of a single individual or a single department: it's a shared journey that demands collaboration across various departments. It's not new that financial wellbeing of employees extends far beyond the simple payslip. It encompasses a myriad of elements, ranging from health and safety considerations (poor financial wellbeing causes stress and Health & Safety Executive is clear on companies’ duties when it comes to workplace stress!) to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). It spans across reward, benefits, pensions, finance, and broader HR. It's a holistic blend that, when interwoven, shapes the fabric of a truly supportive and thriving financial wellbeing programme. Picture the possibilities when these departments come together, pooling their expertise and resources! By embracing a collaborative mindset, they can craft a well-rounded financial wellbeing strategy. This united approach offers a wider array of options, allowing companies to deliver tailored solutions and, ultimately, achieving superior outcomes. Importantly, this joint effort presents an opportunity for efficient budget allocation across the various departments. By sharing resources, costs can be optimised and the impact of initiatives magnified. It can also result in a better senior management buy-in – an important element to a successful financial wellbeing programme! I would encourage every company to dismantle the silos and bridge any gaps that might exist within the organisation. Collaboration is key. You don’t have to change the organisational structure, simply talk more, set up a working group or have regular catch ups to ensure everyone is informed what is happening, enabling to deliver a joint approach that, I can assure you, is welcome by employees.  Companies should cultivate a culture of cooperation where health and safety, employee wellbeing, DEI, reward, benefits, pensions, finance and HR functions collaborate harmoniously to champion the cause of holistic financial wellbeing. Together, they can lay a stronger foundation for the financial security of employees, thereby contributing to their overall wellbeing and success. And speaking of collaboration, I'm here to extend my hand in support. With my financial wellbeing experience and expertise, I stand ready to assist in furthering your collective goal of comprehensive financial wellbeing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can help, drop me a LinkedIn message or contact me on Alexandra.Kitching@outlook.com. #FinancialWellbeing #Collaboration #EmployeeEngagement #WorkplaceWellness #Teamwork #UKWorkplaces

Check out my latest post on the importance of united approach when it comes to financial wellbeing.

We're excited to start our ✨ Employee Spotlight ✨ series, where we'll be highlighting the amazing people who make our company so great. To start, we'll be talking to our CEO, Ian Somerset ⭐ "What I love most about working for Money Wellness is just how much we make a difference in people’s lives. We receive feedback that is genuinely heartfelt and to know that we’ve helped people in very vulnerable positions is something we don’t take lightly. It's also important to recognise how hard our colleagues work and how passionate they are about what they do – we have a great community at Money Wellness and people genuinely care. We recently received feedback about what our colleagues love the most about their jobs and the top two cited reasons (by an overwhelming majority) were the impact they have on people’s lives and the colleagues they work with. You can’t ask for more than that! My advice to employees on helping others and bettering their futures is to take a moment and realise just how much their work means to our customers – it’s easy to be caught up in the whirlwind of work and not take stock, but it’s so important to do so. Be proud of what you do; from our tech teams to our advisers to our customer service teams to our support colleagues – we all form part of a company that strives to make the lives of thousands of people better and every single member of our community enables us to do that. For their own futures, I think it’s always important to utilise the support around them, to have meaningful conversations about your future with your managers, and to make the most out of every day. A work-life balance is important for emotional resilience and job satisfaction so don’t forget to do the things that can help you foster both. In terms of the practical side of their future? Follow our own advice - make sure you have a workable budget, make sensible changes where you can start ‘future proofing’ with savings, and if finances become difficult seek help as early as possible! My vision for the company is to become the place people naturally think of when they want to resolve their money worries. We want to work with brilliant partners that enhance the options, tools and solutions people can access and do it in a way that is simple, easy, and effective. We are making great advances in technology to give customers more choice as to when, where and how they want to obtain help and support. I'm excited about everything the future has to hold for Money Wellness! We’re growing as a business every day and there are great innovations to come and real progress that will benefit so many people. And in a very real sense, there are difficult times ahead for the country – the cost-of-living crisis isn’t going anywhere – so I am extremely focused on how we can help our customers ‘live more and stress less’ about their money worries." Thanks, Ian! Stay tuned for more Employee Spotlights ⭐ #employeespotlight #gettoknowus

If you are a decision maker in a business then this is a post worth reading. Financial Well Being in the workplace is something worth paying money for to do correctly. By correctly I mean deliver a well being service/ product that engages the employees/ stakeholders. I know from personal experience it has impact. Even the employer on their balance sheet. And if you are an employer who delegates this to your ops department or HR then give them the budget and resources to do this properly and even create some KPIs so you can measure results. There's a return on your investment (ROI) And a (ROL) Return on Life. Everyone wins.

Financial wellbeing in the workplace has been under an increasing spotlight in recent times. But how do you introduce an engaging financial wellbeing strategy to your workforce? We’ve put together some tips to help 👉 https://lnkd.in/gFrXkBHv #FinancialResilience #FinancialWellbeing #WorkplacePension

Financial wellbeing in the workplace has been under an increasing spotlight in recent times. But how do you introduce an engaging financial wellbeing strategy to your workforce? We’ve put together some tips to help 👉 https://lnkd.in/gFrXkBHv #FinancialResilience #FinancialWellbeing #WorkplacePension

We can help employees navigate numerous financial challenges throughout their careers. Let me know if you'd like a demo of HL Workplace

A somewhat belated happy 2024 to you all. I haven’t posted much yet on LinkedIn this year so thought I’d start this post by wishing everyone the best for the coming 12 months! The start of a new year is always the opportunity to look ahead and to think about what’s important over this next period and for anyone working in #humancapital or #humanresources, this thought leadership piece is a really insightful and helpful read. None of us has as much time as we’d like to digest information, but knowledge and understanding is so important in the increasingly complex world in which we all live. This article, Five Big HR Trends To Watch In 2024, is superhelpful because it highlights the macro trends which will impact the people space over the coming year so providing anyone working in this area with some really useful pointers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the CWO of Aon, I was particularly struck by trend 4: Invest in wellbeing to achieve human sustainability. As my colleague, Lisa Patel observes in the article: ‘By shifting to a wellbeing mindset, we can improve employee resilience while improving health outcomes’. Organisations need to focus on wellbeing and to understand what really drives wellbeing because improved wellbeing means better performance, at both individual and company level. Employees are asking that companies take wellbeing seriously and, in order to recruit, engage and keep the best people, we need to consider their wellbeing and find ways to support it. Take a look at this article; it’s a short read but one packed with helpful thinking. Here at Aon we talk about helping people make better decisions and I hope that the ideas in this piece might help that process. I’ve added the link in the comments below so you can find it easily. I'm also always interested in other people's perspectives, so do let me know your thoughts on these trends. Thank you – as always – to my fantastic colleagues for contributing to this: Farheen Dam Fernando Campos Doug Melton, PhD Brooke Green Lisa Patel #wellbeing #wellbeingatwork #humancapitalsolutions #EmployeeBenefits #aon #aonunited

This week I took a gamble & changed my whole approach, and it worked! I am sure most of us have come across the term 'unconscious incompetence' When I consider the 4 stages of learning, most people working in the financial wellbeing industry are still at level 1. And they're the ones supposed to be helping organisations improve their employees' financial wellbeing. It's OK for an employer or HR team to be at level 1, as long as they outsource the solution to a level 4 consultant. The trouble is, I rarely come across any level 4 consultants! This is what employers are up against and a large part of the reason that most employers have been wasting their time and money trying to help their people. HR teams are incredibly stretched and there is an increased focus nowadays on their own wellbeing, as many are burning out trying to help everybody else. So, this week I decided to take a lovely bunch of HR professionals on a journey to level 2 to help them save time, money and see intuitively what works. On Wednesday we delved deep into a full understanding of what financial wellbeing really is, and what it is not. We also dived deep into a the real motivation of financial services businesses that are promoting themselves as experts. By knowing these things in detail so that they are truly understood means that these HR people will never look at workplace financial wellbeing, or their employee benefits comms, the same way ever again. It is like putting a pair of glasses on and suddenly what you see is crystal clear and sharp. I felt this was the greatest gift I could give an organisation, the trained eye sees so much more. Eyes cannot see, what the mind doesn't know. I was so pleased with the result, here's a couple of comments from 2 of the attendees: "A really eye opening session which will support me in approaching financial wellbeing for my teams from a very different perspective! I never knew!  Darren has a lovely delivery style with clear and transparent insight clearly gained from lots of knowledge and experience." Michelle Batt, Group HR Director, ILX Group. "Great webinar today, adding knowledge from different areas of corporate wellbeing, and looking forward to deepening my understanding in the upcoming sessions. Thank you, Darren for sharing!" Julieta Carbo, Pshychologist. So I have decided to run this event again on March 14th at 10am for my LinkedIn connections. Details and registration here: https://lnkd.in/grRGR-q4 We will get there eventually if we persevere. #workplacewellbeing #financialwellbeing #

As we wrap up our first few months in business and an incredible 2023, I'm thrilled to share the key milestones that defined our success. This year, we've taken significant strides towards empowering individuals and organisations in their financial wellbeing. Here's a glimpse of our achievements: 📘 Guides That Empower: For smaller businesses and individuals eager to explore creating their own platform or initiatives we published 'How to Build a Zero-Cost Employee Financial Wellbeing Starter Programme Platform Blueprint'. A step-by-step guide and roadmap checklist to help you curate your first initiative with ease. An 'Employer’s HR Guide to Vision-Led Financial Wellbeing Strategies and Checklists for Your Team' helps you craft vision-led employee financial wellbeing strategies, content, and offerings for your own programme. 💡 Commitment to Mental Health At Work: Our unwavering commitment underscores our dedication to creating a supportive and inclusive workplace environment. 🌐 Professional Accreditations: We qualified as an Approved CPD Provider with the The CPD Group, emphasising our commitment to continuous professional and personal development. Becoming Certified Trauma Aware with the Union Institute showcases our dedication to fostering trauma-informed relationships and workplace environments both online and offline. 💰 Raising Awareness: We've been at the forefront of raising awareness about the growing challenge of employee financial wellbeing for businesses of all sizes. Financial wellbeing initiatives are becoming pivotal in attracting and retaining top talent. 🌟 PATHFINDER Unveiled: 🚀 In Progress: The creation, launch, and ongoing expansion of PATHFINDER, our fully inclusive, diverse, visionary three-tiered foresight-first employee financial wellbeing platform and programme, mark a significant leap forward. 🛠️ Xtra Bonus: PATHFINDER now includes our automated, rolling, contextual budgeting, cash flow forecasting, and wealth planning SUPER-TOOL Xtra. 🌈 Open for Onboarding: PATHFINDER Foundations, with a special launch offer for businesses with less than 20 people, and PATHFINDER Progressions are now open for onboarding. A few longer-term trials are still available. 🤝 Partnerships Underway: Exciting professional financial planning and money coaching partnerships are underway, further enriching our commitment to comprehensive financial support for employees and their families. 📚 Financial Education Events: Our new events programme is set to provide valuable insights, inspiration, and resources to enhance financial literacy across the board during 2024. 🌐 New Website Launch: To better serve you, we've unveiled a brand-new website, offering user-friendly access to our employee financial wellbeing resources. None of this would be possible without our incredible team, partners, and supporters. Thanks for being an integral part of our journey. #EmployeeFinancialWellbeing #FinancialWellbeing #MentalHealthAtWork