Building the knowledge.

28th April 2016

Jonathan Watts-Lay, Director, WEALTH at work comments in Employee Benefits magazine about developing a financial education programme in the workplace.

“Prior to implementing a [financial education] programme, an employer should decide what content to include and how to deliver. Employers might want to consider what the key financial issues are among staff. This can consist of push and pull issues,” says Jonathan Watts-Lay, Director, WEALTH at work.

Watts-Lay continues; “Some of the stuff [employers] will need to push out is often around the benefits they offer, for example, if they’re offering a pension, share schemes, salary sacrifice [arrangements and] voluntary benefits, a lot of that employees don’t really understand, but the employer has put in place, presumably for a reason, so the employer needs to have a ‘push’ strategy to make sure all employees understand what is available.”

“It’s then down to the individual to make that decision as to whether they think it will be worthwhile them attending [a financial education seminar]. If it’s at-retirement, for example, where a person has reached the age of 55, so they could retire and take their money, it’s quite right [for the employer] to be explicit and say: ‘you’re now at an age when you might want to consider retirement, or taking money out of your pension.’”