Why UK Employers Can No Longer Financial Wellbeing in the Workplace
Most employers know they should be doing more on financial wellbeing. Fewer know where to start, and fewer still are honest about how much of what they currently offer is actually reaching employees in any meaningful way.
Reporting from Employee Benefits magazine found that 59% of young employees want more wellbeing support from their employer. That is not a fringe view. It is a majority of a generation that will make up an increasing proportion of most workforces over the next decade, and it suggests that whatever employers think they are providing, it is not landing.
What the 2025 Employee Benefits Research Actually Shows
The Great Employee Benefits Study 2025 UK Snapshot surveyed 1,000 UK employees and 237 employers. It was produced by researchers from Aalto University and the Pole Star Advisory think tank, so it is reasonably robust.
The headline numbers are encouraging on the surface. Employee satisfaction with benefits jumped from 57% in 2024 to 68% in 2025, which is a notable improvement. But employers estimated satisfaction at 76%, meaning there is still an eight-point gap between what organisations think they are delivering and what employees actually report experiencing. That gap has persisted for two consecutive years.
On training and development specifically, 82% of employees said they found learning opportunities appealing, up four points year on year. That puts it among the most valued benefits categories in the entire survey. And 60% of employees said they would be more likely to stay committed to their organisation if their employer invested in their wellbeing rather than simply putting up their salary. Pay still matters, obviously, but it is not the whole story.
Why Benefits Do Not Always Deliver the Value Employers Expect
Offering a benefit is not the same as employees understanding it, valuing it, or using it. This sounds obvious but it is where a lot of wellbeing spending quietly goes to waste.
Pension auto-enrolment is a good example. Most UK employees are now enrolled in a workplace pension, but research from the Money and Pensions Service consistently shows that large numbers of people have only a vague understanding of how their pension works, what they are contributing, or what kind of income it might generate in retirement. The benefit exists. The understanding does not.
The same applies to protection policies, salary sacrifice schemes, and employee assistance programmes. These can be genuinely valuable. Many employees never engage with them because nobody has explained what they are or why they matter. Financial wellbeing education is not about adding new benefits — it is about making the ones you already offer do what they are supposed to do.
Employee Financial Wellbeing Is Not Just About Earning More
There is a tendency to conflate financial wellbeing with pay. They are related but they are not the same thing.
Employee financial wellbeing is about whether someone feels in control of their finances, able to cover their costs, build some resilience against unexpected expenses, and make reasonable plans for the future. You can earn a decent salary and still feel financially chaotic if you do not have the knowledge or habits to manage it. Equally, people on modest incomes who understand budgeting, avoid high-cost debt, and make use of available support can often feel more financially secure than higher earners who do not.
The CIPD has documented the link between financial stress and reduced workplace performance in some detail. Employees who are worried about money are less focused, more likely to be absent, and make worse decisions. None of that is a surprise if you have ever been through a period of financial difficulty yourself, but it does make the case that addressing financial wellbeing is not a luxury add-on. It affects how people work.
Financial Wellbeing for SMEs: Why Smaller Employers Face a Different Problem
Financial wellbeing for SMEs rarely looks like the polished programmes you see written up in HR publications. Smaller businesses do not typically have a dedicated wellbeing team, an internal communications function, or a budget that stretches to bespoke consultancy.
What they often do have is something large organisations genuinely struggle to replicate: proximity. A manager in a 30-person business is far more likely to notice when someone is distracted, withdrawn, or going through a difficult patch than a line manager in a 3,000-person organisation. That closeness can be a real asset when it comes to financial wellbeing, provided managers feel confident enough to have those conversations and employees know where to turn if they need support.
E-learning works particularly well in the SME context for exactly this reason. It does not require anyone to deliver it in-house, it is consistent, and employees can use it when they want to rather than being timetabled into a lunch-and-learn that half the team will miss. Topics that matter most tend to be the practical basics: understanding a payslip, how auto-enrolment works, how to build an emergency fund, and where to go for free debt advice.
Financial Stress, Employer Duty of Care, and the HSE Management Standards for Stress
Employers sometimes treat financial wellbeing as a voluntary kindness. There is a stronger argument that it sits within an existing duty of care that many organisations have not fully thought through.
The HSE Management Standards for stress set out six conditions that contribute to work-related stress: demands, control, support, relationships, role clarity, and how change is managed. Financial stress intersects with several of these directly. Employees who are financially anxious often feel a loss of control, report inadequate support from their employer, and find it harder to manage the demands placed on them at work. An employer who does nothing to address financial wellbeing when financial stress is clearly affecting performance is not meeting the spirit of the HSE standards, regardless of whether they have technically ticked the boxes.
This is not about liability for its own sake. The HSE framework was designed to prompt employers to look at the whole picture of what affects employee stress, and financial pressure is very much part of that picture.
Financial Wellbeing Champion Training: A Practical Starting Point
Not every organisation needs to design a comprehensive financial education programme from scratch. For many employers, particularly smaller ones, financial wellbeing champion training is a more realistic and often more effective entry point.
The model is similar to the mental health first aider approach that many workplaces now use. A small number of employees, usually volunteers, receive training to act as peer supporters and signposters. They do not provide financial advice, and it is important to be clear about that distinction. What they do is make it easier for colleagues to have conversations about financial difficulty without stigma, and to point them towards reliable resources such as MoneyHelper when they need more structured help.
The evidence behind peer support models in wellbeing is reasonably strong, and financial wellbeing champion training can get an organisation from nothing to something meaningful without requiring a large budget or specialist HR expertise.
What a Sensible Employee Financial Wellbeing Programme Actually Looks Like
There is no single template that works for every organisation, but the programmes that tend to have most impact share a few characteristics.
They start with communication. Employees cannot engage with what they do not know exists, and most organisations do a poor job of explaining their benefits in language that makes the value clear. Revisiting how you communicate the pension, the EAP, and any protection benefits is a reasonable first step that costs very little.
They invest in education. Not awareness-raising or motivational content, but structured learning that builds financial capability over time: budgeting, savings habits, understanding pensions, recognising and avoiding high-cost debt, knowing what state benefits and free advice services exist. E-learning is the practical delivery mechanism for most employers because it scales without needing internal facilitation.
They make support accessible. Employees who need help beyond education need to know how to get it quickly, whether that is a route to MoneyHelper, a debt advice service, or an EAP that covers financial coaching.
The GEBS research showed that more than half of UK employers plan to increase spending on training and development. If some of that budget goes towards financial education, it is likely to generate better returns than many other wellbeing initiatives, because it directly improves both how employees experience their existing benefits and how they function at work.
Aspina provides financial wellbeing e-learning for UK employers and SMEs. If you want to explore what structured financial education could look like for your organisation, take a look at our resources or get in touch.