UK employees increasingly worried about their financial position
Financial troubles are a key factor in making UK workers less productive, according to a report by the Social Market Foundation and Neyber.
Working Well: How employers can improve the wellbeing and productivity of their workforce, produced by the Social Market Foundation and Neyber, has outlined fresh data on the financial wellbeing of UK workers.
The number of people in the UK under increased financial pressure has doubled since 2014, the report found. And results showed that four in 10 UK workers have suffered stress as a result of money worries over the last year.
A quarter of workers said they have lost sleep due to financial worries and 29 per cent of UK workers are reported to have no savings or investments.
The financial fragility of the UK workforce should be a cause for concern for both employers and policy makers throughout the UK, according to the report's authors. They suggests financial worries are a key cause of the productivity problem in the UK - the country is currently 16 per cent less productive on average than other G7 countries.
More than one in 10 (13 per cent) workers admitted that money worries affected their concentration at work The research also highlights the relationship between money stress and poor mental health, which is a key area of concern for workplace wellbeing at the moment.
The report suggests employers could resolve finance-related productivity problems by helping improve the financial capability of their staff through routes such as financial training programmes, offering independent financial advice, or providing access to saving and debt products.
“[These findings] provide a wake up call for all UK employers,” said Monica Kalia, chief strategy officer at Neyber. “It demonstrates the need to push past the taboo associated with financial stress, and look at it for what it really is, crippling for employers, employees, and organisations […] and we need to provide employees with the tools to achieve financial mindfulness, and improve financial capability.”
Paul Litchfield, chair of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, said: “We must ensure that we strike the right balance between individual responsibility, and what employers and society might sensibly do to help resolve money issues."
Kalia added: “The majority of the British workforce is disengaged; and this is not just a productivity problem from a global competitive standpoint, but a human problem."