Make informed choices when managing your money

By Paul Reeves

Earlier this year, Yorkshire Bank launched a dedicated Employee Financial Well-being proposition, aimed at improving access to financial education and guidance for employees of our business customers.

Research suggests that one in four* UK employees have financial concerns that impact their productivity in work, and over half (58%)** would benefit from employer-facilitated support. So, with this in mind, we created a bespoke service aimed at helping people make more informed choices when it comes to managing their money. This service is aimed at customers with larger workforces and our Financial Well-being support team includes banking and mortgage advisers, as well as staff from the Private Banking team.

We know motivated and productive employees are crucial to the success of any business, so this new proposition provides an opportunity for us to enhance the service we offer to our customers.We are there for all their critical moments in a business lifecycle, so we feel we should be there for important events in their employees lives too. It’s a completely tailored service so we are working with our customers and their staff to ensure we are meeting their individual needs - sharing our expertise and knowledge with their employees at a time and date to suit them.

We recently visited Pym & Wildsmith, a metal finishers based in Bramshall, near Uttoxeter, who have signed up to our initiative.   

Sarah Pym-Eaton, Finance Director at Pym & Wildsmith, said: “We believe that a stress-free workforce is a powerful one and when I heard about the financial well-being support the Bank could offer our team I thought it was a great idea. Whether buying a new home, making plans for the future or just in need of some guidance on day-to-day budgeting, employees can speak to the Bank’s Financial Well-being team right here in our offices. The support has been invaluable and the feedback from staff has been excellent.”

Employee well-being is extremely important in the workplace and our main goal is to have employees feeling more confident about their finances, which in turn can help their productivity at work. We look forward to working with businesses across our region as we develop this proposition.

* Paul Reeves is Head of Customer Banking for Yorkshire Bank, Birmingham

(References: *CIPD2017, **FCA Report – Financial Well-being in the Workplace: A Way Forward)