Pay reviews are done, summer holiday costs are landing, childcare bills are spiking. And for younger employees especially, the gap between income and outgoings quietly widens.
Financial stress doesn’t tend to announce itself in a one-to-one or show up in an absence form – it shows up as distraction. Mistakes. Disengagement. The CIPD has consistently found financial worries to be among the leading drivers of employee stress in the UK – yet financial wellbeing remains one of the most underdeveloped parts of most benefits packages.
Mid-year is the right moment to ask: what are we actually doing about it?
Here’s something that surprises a lot of HR leaders when they look closely: most EAPs already include financial guidance.
Not just a helpline: actual access to financial counselling – a confidential space where someone can talk through debt, budgeting pressure, or money anxiety without it going anywhere near their manager or their HR file.
Take-up is low – not because employees don’t need it, but because they don’t know it exists, or don’t connect financial stress to something an EAP can help with.
A single, well-worded communication this month reminding employees what’s available could make a genuine difference. The infrastructure is there. It just needs someone to point at it.
And then there’s the generation just arriving at work. One in four (26%) of young adults aged 18 to 21 say they received no meaningful financial education at school, despite it being part of the national curriculum for over a decade (Santander UK, 8 January 20251).
That means a significant proportion of your newer and younger employees are navigating their first payslips, first bank accounts, and first financial decisions largely without a framework for doing so. That’s a welfare issue. It’s also a productivity issue.
Employers who invest in financial education for younger staff, or support the families of their workforce, build loyalty and trust in a way that a gym membership or cycle-to-work scheme simply can’t.
Financial wellbeing isn’t a January conversation. It’s a year-round responsibility, and right now, the current moment, is always the right moment to act on it.
1 www.santander.com/en/press-room/press-releases/2025/01/santander-uk-finds-that-millions-of-young-people-still-leave-school-without-financial-education
