At Central Co-op, we recognise that helping our employees with their financial wellbeing is an essential part of our staff wellbeing programme, called ‘We’ve got you’.
Encouraging employees to save begins with creating a culture that prioritises financial health. At Central Co-op, we leverage our Difference Maker Hub, a platform powered by Reward Gateway which is exclusive to our employees, to offer a wide variety of retail discounts and savings on everyday expenses. Staff have collectively saved more than £30,000 on the hub so far.
The hub also hosts additional financial and resources including budgeting tools, financial support and interactive webinars, helping our employees to access resources to make informed financial decisions. We also recently introduced Wagestream and iTrent Financial Wellbeing, where employees can open a build pot with an attractive interest rate to save money directly from their pay. Whether they are saving for something specific or just a rainy day, it also offers a financial health score, benefits checker and a financial coach to help support our employees.
To help make pay go further, we’ve also implemented benefits such as holiday buy, a bikes-for-work scheme and an electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme for drivers that allows employees to save through salary sacrifice, providing tax and national insurance savings at source.
Supporting our employees in saving money is not just a financial initiative; it’s a commitment to their overall wellbeing and security. By prioritising financial empowerment and ensuring employees can make the right decisions for their personal circumstances, helping our employees to remain engaged and resilient.
Promotion of these benefits is crucial to ensure maximum engagement. We actively promote the difference maker hub through internal communications. Sharing success stories from employees to highlight the tangible benefits and encourage wider participation.
Employers can help staff save money by putting benefits to support savings in place and communicating these well. These often can be inexpensive or an extension of current benefit or engagement offerings, but the key is to make them easily accessible. For example, when our employees login to Wagestream for the first time, the app asks if they want to open a savings pot automatically. We’ve seen a great take up by using this method and helping them to save. Effective communications and processes will really encourage staff to save money.
Jen Roberts is senior reward and wellbeing manager at Central Co-op
