Five practical ways to boost your employees' financial wellbeing

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With many people still navigating economic uncertainty, offering tailored support to your employees can make a real difference to their financial wellbeing. Here’s how we’re providing personalised support at Standard Life – and how you could help boost your employees’ financial wellbeing too.

Employee financial wellbeing remains a top priority. In fact, in our latest annual employer survey, financial wellbeing was rated as the number one area of interest, with 68% of employers saying it was their most important concern of the year.

This is positive news, given that many people’s financial wellbeing levels remain low as they navigate the ongoing effects of the cost of living crisis. Indeed, our Retirement Voice 2024 research revealed that: 

• Almost half (45%) of people say economic uncertainty has affected their mental health or made them more stressed 
• Just 28% of people say they’re ‘comfortable’ with their financial situation, down from 35% in the previous year
• Two-thirds of people across all generations are worried about meeting their energy bills (69%) and coping with rising prices (66%)

It’s clear there’s a need for financial wellbeing support – and employers are very keen to provide it. 

Personalised financial wellbeing support is key

Providing practical support to your employees can make a real difference to their day-to-day financial wellbeing. Better still, by offering support that’s targeted to an employee’s specific money worries or life stage – like managing debt or approaching retirement – it’s more likely to have a tangible impact.

Here at Standard Life, we use the insights from our employer and customer research to help us shape our financial wellbeing support. Doing so has allowed us to deliver personalised experiences to people across different life and career stages – and win a clean sweep of gold awards across our entire financial wellbeing offering in the Benefits Guru 2025 Financial Wellness ratings as a result.

Five financial wellbeing tips to support employees

With everyone facing different financial concerns – and dealing with them in different ways – it can be difficult to know how to support employees in the best way. Here are 5 top tips to help you get started.

1. Improve signposting

Do your employees know where to find relevant information and support when they need it?

If not, look at ways to improve signposting to your financial wellbeing solutions. You could create a communications campaign to promote the different support on offer, such as regular newsletters that remind employees where they can turn to for help. Our ready-to-go campaigns can help you with this, providing free and ready-to-use materials that you can use to deliver important communications to your employees.

You could point people towards external support too, such as the government’s cost of living support, charities, and advice services. These can provide further guidance to employees who may be struggling.

2. Support first-time buyers 

Buying a home is a significant life event that can have a major impact on your employees’ financial wellbeing. 

You could help by pointing them to resources that specifically cover topics surrounding the homebuying process. MoneyHelper, for instance, has some useful tips on saving for a deposit and applying for a mortgage.
 
If your employees are with Standard Life for their workplace pension scheme, they can also use our Homebuyer Hub. This acts as a helping hand to guide first-time buyers throughout the entire process, and provides tailored, bitesize content and personalised nudges at every step.

3. Provide budgeting tools

Our Retirement Voice 2024 research revealed that 24% of people are finding their current financial situation difficult or very difficult to manage on their present income.

You can support your employees during these times of uncertainty by pointing them towards budgeting tools that help them keep track of their monthly incomings and outgoings, such as MoneyHelper. This has a range budgeting tools that can help categorise their spending.

There are plenty of online platforms that can support better budgeting as well. Tools that use open finance technology – like our Money Mindset* platform – can offer a powerful way to simplify and automate the process. Available to Standard Life workplace pension scheme members, it provides a real-time view of their finances, including bank accounts, mortgages, and pensions, making it easier to budget and stay on top of 
spending.

4. Help employees find lost pensions

It can be difficult to keep track of your pension pots, especially if you’ve had a few jobs over the years. This can rear its head for employees who are preparing for retirement or looking to get their pension savings in order.

You can help employees find lost pensions by guiding them towards resources that will help track them down. The government’s pension tracing service is a good place to start, and allows employees to locate old or lost pensions by entering a few basic details. 

Standard Life pension scheme members can also access the Pension Finder tool through our mobile app. This connects to employees’ LinkedIn profiles to scan their employment history, and searches the government’s pension tracing service automatically to find old or lost pensions.

Research shows that there’s over £31 billion in lost pension pots, so it’s worth your employees checking if they have any old pots floating around. If they do, employees may want to consider combining their pension pots into a single plan. Doing so could make it simpler to manage and track their savings.

Of course, it’s important that your employees think about if transferring is right for them. They’ll need to check they’re not giving up any valuable benefits or guarantees if they transfer, as they may want to keep these. Also, the value of investments can go down as well as up, and employees may get back less than was paid in.

5. Encourage pension planning

According to our Retirement Voice 2024 report, those who do a great deal of planning are less worried that their retirement income won’t last their full retirement lifetime (37% vs. 51%).

By encouraging employees to get started on their pension planning sooner rather than later, this could help them feel more positive about their financial future.

A good starting point is to signpost employees to resources like the PLSA’s Retirement Living Standards. This outlines how much they’d need each year to fund a minimum, moderate, and comfortable lifestyle in retirement. 

In addition, employees can use Standard Life’s Mixed Income Builder tool. This helps them assess whether they’re on track to meet the minimum income needed each year to cover their essential living costs, based on the PLSA’s Retirement Living Standards. The tool also illustrates how purchasing an annuity could support their goals by converting part of their pension savings into a guaranteed income for life.

For more insights on financial wellbeing, including resources on how you can help support your employees, visit our Financial Wellbeing hub and read our articles.

*Money Mindset is provided in partnership with Moneyhub Financial Technology Limited