Employee Financial Wellbeing

The correlation between good employee mental wellbeing and business performance is hard to ignore. According to National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing research, 45% of employees say factors including stress, anxiety, burnout and financial insecurity are impacting their productivity. Stigma prevents many from seeking help, and these issues are likely to continue stifling growth and drive costs higher¹. Furthermore, as many as 43% of Australians have experienced a mental disorder at some point in their lives².

In the current economic climate, financial worries are a major source of stress for many in Australia³. 13 interest rate rises, inflation higher than it has been in more than 30 years⁴, and according to Aon’s Head of Financial Wellbeing, Paul Gordon “stagnating wage growth has seen the current cost of living pressures transcend every income bracket, and few are left unaffected”.

Employers are faced with a unique challenge of providing the systems and support services to help employees navigate their challenges with mental health, including the struggles driven by financial stress.

Aon’s Financial Wellbeing program helps you empower your employees to take control of their financial wellbeing and could help manage financial stress. By taking a behaviour-led approach to tackling financial wellbeing, our program starts with the root cause - helping employees understand their spending habits and delve into their attitude towards money.

This allows our program to offer education and guidance tailored to the spending habits of individuals. With a focus on story-telling and incremental change, Aon’s program draws on global insights from being a world leader in reward, benefits and wellbeing advice, and helps equip your employees with the skills and mindset to make their finances work for them.

Clients who come to us for financial wellbeing programs receive tailored solutions for their individual challenges, including an initial assessment using a wellbeing maturity index. Under our program, your employees will receive access to a comprehensive suite of resources to assist with further assist with strategy implementation.

Commitment to diversity is an ethos that many successful organisations have embedded into their values – yet financial wellbeing can be quintessential to diversity. Not only because money matters to everyone, regardless of their age, gender, race, or life stage, but also because financial diversity may be overlooked in many organisational diversity programs. With a diverse workforce comes a spectrum of financial circumstances – employees with identical incomes may have very different parameters on what constitutes being financially comfortable. A strong financial wellbeing program helps reflects these varying needs and may offer guidance and supporting material accordingly. Creating an environment where financial wellbeing is acknowledged and financial diversity is recognised could contribute to an inclusive and collaborative workplace.