Five practical ways to support 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 2025 research revealed that: 

• 71% say they have a more cautious attitude towards their finances because of cost of living issues
• Less than half (45%) feel positive about their current financial situation 
• 63% of people are worried about energy costs

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

Personalised 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 the support we provide. Doing so has allowed us to deliver personalised experiences to people across different life and career stages. As an added bonus, it’s also allowed us to win a clean sweep of gold awards across all four areas of Benefits Guru’s 2025 Financial Wellness and Workplace Pension ratings.

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 five top tips to help you get started.

1. Provide budgeting tools

Our Retirement Voice 2025 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.

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. Help employees improve their financial knowledge 

Everyone knows that knowledge is power. By helping employees improve their financial knowledge, it could make a big difference to their confidence and ability to make well-informed decisions about their finances. It could even lead to better money habits in the long run.

Despite the positives, it’s not always easy to find the time or headspace to learn something new, especially when juggling multiple work and personal commitments. 

The key is to provide content that’s relevant, easy to digest, and reflects employees’ financial priorities. For instance, our Good Money Mood webinars cover a range of different topics that can help employees get to know their money better. Plus, employees can watch them on-demand at a time and place that suits their schedule.

4. Help families manage their finances

Some of your employees may be managing more than just their personal finances ¬– they may be managing their family’s financial planning too. Whether they’re budgeting for childcare costs, saving for family holidays, or supporting their teenagers through university, there’s a lot for them to navigate.

Having conversations about money at home, and making this a regular part of family life, could make things easier for employees to manage. In fact, research by the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) shows that people who talk about money help their children form good lifetime money habits.
  
You could help by signposting to information that helps normalise conversations about money, such as MoneyHelper’s Family & Care resources.

Standard Life workplace pension scheme members can also use our Family Finance Hub, a digital  coaching platform that helps families talk about and manage their money together. Packed with tools and content, it gives employees the support they need to guide their families through key financial stages and kickstart conversations about money. 

5. Encourage pension planning

According to our Retirement Voice 2025 report, those who do a great deal of retirement planning feel more positive about what their life will be like in five years’ time, than those who do none (66% vs. 36%).

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 Pensions UK'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 Pensions UK'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