Building merchants Travis Perkins has launched a financial education programme for its 30,000 UK employees.
The new programme, which is provided by Neyber, includes a financial wellbeing hub featuring online tools to help staff manage their financial planning, as well as any debt issues they may face. Through the hub employees can also access articles, videos, debt calculators, webinars and podcasts offering guidance on specific financial situations.
Travis Perkins will also launch a payroll loan benefit from February 2018, allowing staff to access low-cost loans direct from their salary.
The financial education programme forms part of Travis Perkins’ employee wellbeing strategy in order to align with its people values as well as its overall business goals. These goals include supporting employee engagement, reducing absence rates, improving safety, embracing its multigenerational workforce, and striving to be seen as an employer of choice.
Communication of the financial education programme is centred around the organisation's existing health and safety messages to garner employee engagement. Communication methods include a weekly email focused around financial wellbeing, targeted financial health campaigns, the use of reward champions within the business, and conversations in the organisation’s Google Plus employee community. Travis Perkins also links financial health conversations to employees’ life events, such as marriage or the birth of a child, to help put financial issues into context for their own lives.
Information on financial wellbeing is also available via Travis Perkins’ benefits portal, My Perks. Its new financial education programme will sit alongside this as well as existing financial benefits, such as the organisation’s pension scheme, employee assistance programme, My Money Works financial guidance hub, and its reward and recognition programme.
Simon Naylor, head of group benefits, said: “Financial wellbeing is not just important to us to attract and retain the best people, although that’s clearly essential for us. We feel that facilitating financial wellbeing is the right thing to do.”
