How to support employees with the cost of living with employee benefits

Employee benefits can help employers support staff with the cost of living in many important ways.

Employees’ financial situations can vary significantly, which can pose a real challenge when it comes to supporting all staff with the resources available.

There are lots of benefit schemes out there that can support employees in almost any kind of financial situation.

The right benefits set up can not only proactively tackle difficult financial situations but prevent them moving forward too.

So, how can employee benefits support employees with day-to-day costs and improve financial wellbeing?

Savings

Arguably, one of the most important ways to help employees with the cost of living through benefits is to provide unique savings.

Giving your employees access to employee discounts and offers is a great way to help them save. This offering provides employees discounts in a number of different areas.

One important regular cost employee discount schemes can help with is the weekly or monthly shop.

With the right scheme, employees can save hundreds on their essential shopping over the course of a year.

Although the weekly shop is definitely a big draw for employee discounts and offers, there are other ways employees can save too.

Whether they’re looking for new clothes for the kids, the latest tech or thinking of doing a home refresh, there is lots on offer depending on the level of discounts provided as part of your scheme.

When it comes to creating long-lasting financial habits, making savings is important as it gives employees an extra cushion for their finances.

Any further savings made through discounts can be saved through benefit schemes like Workplace ISAs, providing employees competitive returns on their investments.

Doing this can help protect against future financial difficulty.

Financial Wellbeing

There are some great employee benefits that you can implement to help with all aspects of financial wellbeing.

Offering a scheme like Financial Planning gives your employees the chance to speak to financial professionals, and gain advice and support around a huge variety of financial topics.

This can help employees get professional advice on restructuring their existing finances to cope with the problems of today, but also plan to protect and build their finances for the future.

Each employee’s financial situation will be different, which makes benefit schemes like Financial Planning even more important and effective as employees can get advice tailored to their situation.

On-demand, financial advice through a financial education library through your employee benefits platform can also provide another range of information to support employees with the cost-of-living.

Providing different sources of information gives employees more option and opportunities to improve their finances.

Commuting & Travel

Whether it’s travelling to work or weekends away, travelling can incur costs and over time these add up.

Through your employee benefits offerings, there is lots you can do to help support your employees with the cost of commuting and travelling.

Employees will commute and travel in lots of different ways, so it makes sense to accommodate as much of this as possible.

Luckily, there are lots of different benefit schemes available to help you in supplying this support.

For travelling by car, the Car Scheme and MotorSave scheme are two employee benefits that will ultimately help employees save on motoring costs.

Through the Car Scheme, employees can lease a car and pay for it through their monthly salary. Depending on the scheme you use, there’s tons of added extras too including servicing and maintenance included.

Another great scheme for those who drive, is MotorSave. Through MotorSave, employees can save on car maintenance such as MOT, servicing and repairs, spreading the cost and paying monthly.

For employees that prefer to use public transport, commuting loans give them access to travel season tickets, which can be paid for over 12 months through small repayments from their monthly salary.

The Bike Scheme provides another great option, allowing employees to save on a brand-new bike and accessories including e-bikes, which opens the scheme up to employees of all fitness levels.

Flexible Benefits

As we’ve mentioned before, your employees will have a wide range of different needs and expect different things from you as their employer.

When it comes to your employee benefits package, flexible benefits can help with this.

Flexible benefits tech allows employees to essentially tailor their employee benefits experience to them to best suit them and their families.

Employees can make the most of the schemes and benefits that matter most to them rather than utilising one or two schemes from a list of pre-selected benefits.

Each of your employees will have different areas of life that cost of living would affect them most. Plus, different priorities as to where its most important for them to save.

Thankfully, there’s a huge range of options out there in terms of employee benefit schemes and benefits tech to help support employees with the cost of living.

Doing so is a win-win for employers and employees. Employers increasingly have a duty of care to support employees with their wellbeing, and a happier team is a better performing and more productive one too.