Should I Help Financially Struggling Employees?
Should employers help their employees when they are struggling with financial difficulties?
Is it the moral duty of an employer, and does it benefit them to extend a helping hand?
Financial stress can have a profound impact on mental health, and therefore on performance and productivity at work.
When an employer takes steps to help their employees find their way out of financial difficulty, they can improve their happiness and productivity at work.
39% of Canadians of working age (under 65) are struggling to meet their financial commitments, according to the 2019 Canadian Financial Capability Survey.
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About 1 in 6 Canadians say that their monthly spending exceeds their income, while 1 in 4 needs to borrow money to pay for food and daily expenses.
In fact, 41% of Canadians rank problems with money as their greatest stress.
How to Help Employees with Financial Problems
There are several ways employers can help their employees with their financial struggles.
You can directly provide them with assistance at work, or you can help to connect them with the services that will allow them to address their financial concerns.
Learn About Financial Assistance
It can be very useful for employers to be aware of what options are available to people struggling with their finances, and how they can help.
If you educate yourself on these topics, you will be in a better position to assist your employees.
You will have an understanding of what they might be going through and the practical ways in which you can help them.
There are courses and workshops available for employers to learn how to help their employees, as well as plenty of online materials.
Offer Employee Assistance Counselling
If your company has an employee assistance program, financial and psychological counselling may be a part of it.
These services give your employees the resources and support that they need to address both the financial difficulties that they are experiencing and how their problems affect their mental health.
By providing counselling, you can help them to deal with their money issues in a healthy way, from budgeting and managing debt to talking about their stress and other feelings.
Provide Financial Education
Your employees can avoid financial difficulty if they have the right education to help them navigate money issues.
You can offer some different educational tools and programs to allow them to learn what they need to know.
You might provide workshops or webinars, which your employees could attend over lunch or even in their spare time when they have access to online resources.
These sessions can be offered to everyone equally, which means no one needs to specifically ask for help or be singled out to benefit from them.
If you are an employer who wants to help your employees with their financial difficulties, you can encourage them to explore services that can provide them with financial and debt advice.
Bankruptcy Canada can help with consumer proposals and filing bankruptcy for those who are having difficulty.
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