Reinventing HR: Building employee confidence through financial protection

Your employees are dealing with financial challenges more often than you think—and they might need your help to address it.

For sure, you have employee wellness initiatives to ensure the overall well-being of your people. Since financial stress also causes tremendous impact to both physical and mental health of workers (even the company!), you should also include plans that can empower your employees and their families to lead a financially empowered life. It’s time to revisit your duty to your employees. Because if you let financial stress take over them, it can result in negative productivity behaviors such as:

• Absenteeism
• Tardiness
• Mistakes
• Loss of concentration
• Poor quality of output

Employee assistance programs are indeed the top-of-mind solution. However, with the pandemic and inflation, it’s time for us to go beyond the default and proactively identify what causes financial stress among employees. During the 5th Philippine HR Assembly, SAVii’s Chief People Officer Ice Mangcoy emphasized the value of streamlining financial assistance benefits in saving employees from extreme financial anxiety. “Our belief at SAVii is that employment is strong collateral to accompany underserved people on their path to a better financial inclusion. Our conviction is that not only companies have a social role in this process but they also have a clear financial interest to provide the full spectrum of financial services as employee benefits to their staff,” Mangcoy said.

It’s time to revolutionize HR and reinvent employee programs. The first step is to have a clear understanding of how to combat the financial stressors of employees. And the obvious answer is to have a holistic approach in place.

• Protection: Sponsoring health insurance is a great benefit for employees. But amp it up by infusing insurance with an investment vehicle. Employees will have more reason to stay motivated because apart from the guaranteed peace of mind, they can happily sit knowing their money is growing.
  
• Assistance: Strengthen assistance programs by providing a full spectrum of financial solutions and make sure they are efficient and sustainable. This is not limited to financial assistance. You can also include mental health initiatives.
  
• Education: Empower employees through financial education. Giving this opportunity not only guides employees to manage their finances wisely but enables them to journey through the Happy Path.

Mangcoy reminds us all to revisit our responsibility as HR leaders:

1. We have a role in empowering employees toward financial stability. We have to be there in times of real need.
2. We have the power to address key pain points such as financial literacy and fear of indebtedness, availability of financial assistance programs, and inclusivity in which every type of employee receives the same level of support.
3. We also have the power to anticipate the consequences of financial distress on our own organization.

We hope that these insights help you reinvent your employee programs. We’re here to support you all the way—both in life and work. If you want to learn about how our products and services can help your employees, email us at [email protected] to schedule a meeting.