Why financial wellbeing strategies need to start by measuring money-related stress…
A financial wellbeing strategy should be able to answer three questions:
What are our people experiencing?
What support would help them most?
How will we know whether it is working?
Without those answers, even a generous programme can become a collection of benefits, workshops and communications whose impact is difficult to judge.
At FinWELL, we believe the next step for workplace financial wellbeing is to connect education, human support and meaningful measurement. That means understanding money-related stress within the wider picture of mental health, physical health, working conditions and organisational performance.
What could money-related stress be costing your organisation?
Consider an employer with 500 employees earning an average annual salary of £30,000.
That represents £15 million in annual salary payroll. Applying a 4% benchmark produces an illustrative annual cost of £600,000.
This is the calculation behind FinWELL’s new Business Cost Calculator. Employers enter their workforce size and average salary to explore the potential scale of the issue.
The benchmark comes from Barclays’ 2014 research, Financial wellbeing: The last taboo in the workplace?, cited in the Financial Advice Working Group’s March 2017 report prepared for HM Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority. The report links approximately 4% of payroll costs to absence and presenteeism associated with financial distress.
Source: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/fawg-financial-well-being-workplace.pdf#page=18
It is a historical benchmark, rather than a current FCA estimate or a finding that applies equally to every employer. The calculator illustrates a potential cost; it does not measure actual losses or predict savings. It also does not separately quantify recruitment, retention or health and safety impacts.
Its value is in opening a better conversation: what is happening in our workforce, and what can we do about it?
The number gets attention. Employee insight gives direction.
Two organisations with the same payroll can have very different needs.
One might have employees struggling with day-to-day expenses and unpredictable income. Another might have people worried about retirement, caring responsibilities or the financial consequences of a relationship breakdown.
The same workshop will not necessarily help both groups equally. Nor will a higher salary automatically mean someone feels financially secure.
The CIPD’s September 2026 guidance recommends assessing employee needs before deciding on interventions. It highlights that financial difficulties can affect employees at different income levels and life stages, and identifies a gap between providing support and evaluating its effectiveness.
Employers therefore need a baseline that explores more than financial knowledge. Useful questions cover how people feel about their money, their ability to manage commitments and unexpected costs, the pressures affecting them, and the support they would actually use.
Measurement becomes valuable when it helps someone take a practical next step.
Trust is the foundation of useful data
Money is personal. Asking employees about it requires care, clarity and a psychologically safe environment.
Explain why you are asking, what information is collected, who can see it and how it will be used. Make participation voluntary. Give employees a private way to access support, and use anonymous, aggregated findings for organisational planning.
Small teams need particular care: combining department, age and seniority can make someone identifiable even when names are absent. Reporting should protect small groups and avoid collecting detail that serves no clear purpose.
Leaders and champions can help normalise conversations without asking colleagues to disclose their personal finances. The message should be simple: support is available, seeking it is welcome, and you can choose how to engage.
FinWELL’s Money Score® is designed to give employees a starting point for understanding their financial wellbeing and identifying areas of focus. Employer dashboards bring together aggregate insights to help guide priorities and track engagement and reported progress.
The purpose is to help people and improve decisions about support. Scores should never become labels used to judge someone’s suitability for a job or promotion.
Financial wellbeing belongs in the whole wellbeing strategy
An employee worrying about debt may also be sleeping poorly. Someone experiencing economic abuse may need specialist support alongside money guidance. A colleague dealing with illness or caring responsibilities may face financial and emotional pressures at the same time.
The Money and Pensions Service recognises the connection between financial stress, mental and physical health, and workplace performance.
The World Health Organization’s mental health at work guidelines recommend action across organisational interventions, manager training and individual support. This supports a broader approach that considers both working conditions and the help available to employees.
In practice, employers should bring HR, reward, payroll, learning and development, occupational health and health and safety into the conversation.
They should also examine fair pay, predictable working arrangements, accessible benefits and opportunities to progress. Education should complement those foundations. The CIPD identifies a fair and liveable wage as a key ambition within financial wellbeing policy.
Turn insight into a manageable cycle of action
Employers do not need to solve every challenge at once. A practical approach is to:
Listen and establish a baseline. Explore money-related stress, priority topics, preferred support and barriers to access.
Choose a small number of priorities. Agree what you want to improve, who will own the work and when you will review it.
Offer relevant support. Combine education, private guidance and clear routes to specialist help, with options that work for different roles and schedules.
Measure again and adapt. Review participation, actions taken and changes in reported wellbeing, then improve the next stage.
For example, if employees identify difficulty building an emergency buffer, a focused programme might combine practical learning, information about existing savings options and private guidance.
Follow-up could explore whether people took action and feel better able to manage an unexpected bill.
This creates a clear connection between an identified need, the support offered and the outcome being assessed.
Measure progress honestly
Attendance tells you who came. Clicks tell you what attracted attention. Neither, on its own, tells you whether financial wellbeing improved.
Track engagement alongside outcomes: reduced self-reported money stress, greater confidence, clearer next steps, better awareness of support and progress towards employees’ own goals.
Report response rates and consider who may be missing. An improving average can conceal a group still struggling, while a change in who completes the survey can create an apparent improvement.
Where appropriate, review workforce trends such as absence and retention alongside wellbeing findings. Be careful about attribution: improvements may also reflect changes in pay, management, workloads or personal circumstances.
A fall in reported stress cannot automatically be converted into a proven cash saving.
Credible reporting builds trust with employees and gives leaders a stronger basis for future investment.
A practical opportunity for employers of every size
A smaller employer can start with a short anonymous assessment, trusted signposting and one focused session. A larger organisation can develop a coordinated programme across locations, career stages and employee groups.
For international employers, the same principles apply, but delivery needs local knowledge. Language, culture, pensions, benefits and support services vary. A UK payroll benchmark should not be treated as a global cost estimate.
At FinWELL, our ambition is to help raise the standard of financial education, health and wellbeing in the UK and internationally by bringing together human expertise, accessible tools and useful insight.
Our approach connects Money Score®, employer insights, workshops, one-to-one guidance, champion training and ongoing learning. We focus on education, guidance and signposting, without selling financial products or providing regulated financial advice.
The goal is to help employers understand their people, respond with relevant support and build healthier, happier and more productive workplaces.
Start with curiosity. Build trust. Measure what matters. Then act on what you learn.
Try the FinWELL Business Cost Calculator and start a conversation with our team about your workforce, priorities and budget.
Whether you employ five people or 50,000, there is a practical first step towards a more informed financial wellbeing strategy.
Contact us to arrange an initial call and explore ideas for you and your teams?