Most employers already offer some help with money. A pension, an employee assistance programme, perhaps a discount scheme or two.
But our 2026 Elephant in the Room report found only 20% of employers have ever formally asked their people about financial wellbeing. So most of that support has been chosen on instinct, not on what people actually need.
A financial wellbeing strategy fixes that. It joins up your support around three everyday needs: getting to payday, building a safety net and planning for later life. And it makes that support easy to find and use.
Here's how to build one in five steps.
A financial wellbeing strategy is your organisation's plan for supporting employees' financial health beyond salary. It sets out what support you offer, who it's for, how people find it and how you'll know it's working.
It's different from a list of benefits. A strategy joins things up, so a colleague struggling to reach payday, saving for a deposit or worrying about retirement can find the right help without having to work out which of six portals to log into.
It's tempting to skip straight to choosing benefits. Resist it.
Instinct can be misleading. The Elephant report found 53% of employees earning under £40,000 say they're just managing, tight or struggling, and 53% of those earning £100,000 or more have no emergency fund, are living on credit or are behind on a bill. You can't tell who's struggling from a salary.
Start with what you already know: requests for pay advances, hardship fund applications, pension opt-outs and absence patterns. Then run a short, anonymous survey asking how people feel about money, how often they run short before payday and how they'd cover an unexpected £500 bill.
Most financial worries fall into three groups. A strategy that only covers one of them is really a single benefit.
Getting to payday. Life rarely lines up with the pay cycle. A broken boiler on the 19th shouldn't mean an overdraft or a payday lender. Access to pay already earned gives people a safety net that isn't debt.
Building a safety net. A small savings pot is what stops a surprise bill turning into a problem. Saving straight from pay, a little every payday, makes it far more likely to happen.
Planning for later life. Pensions are where good intentions go to wait. Help people understand what they've got, and make it easy to top up when they're ready. In the public sector, Shared Cost AVCs let Local Government Pension Scheme members do this straight from salary.
Alongside all three: education and guidance people can use privately, and clear signposting to free help such as MoneyHelper when someone needs more.
People don't fail to save or plan because they don't care. They fail because it takes effort every month, and life is busy. Systems beat willpower.
Payday is the moment money lands, so it's the most powerful moment to help. If saving, pension top-ups and access to earned pay all happen automatically when people are paid, they keep working long after the launch email is forgotten.
That's the thinking behind My Money Matters: On-Demand Pay, Auto Savings and pension tools in one app, sorted every payday, with Max, our AI money coach, on hand for questions.
The best support in the world doesn't help if nobody knows about it, or if they feel awkward using it.
Make privacy clear. Say plainly that nobody at work sees individual finances.
Talk about real moments. January, the run-up to Christmas, a new tax year, a rate rise.
Reach everyone. Shift briefings, break rooms and QR codes, not just the intranet.
Brief managers. They don't need to be money experts, just ready to point people to help.
Track what changes for people (take-up, savings built, reliance on pay advances) and what the business already measures (absence, turnover, engagement). Share what you find with leadership, and with employees too: "you told us, we did" builds trust for next year.
Then ask again. Needs shift, especially when interest rates and energy bills are on the move.
No. Some of the most useful benefits cost employers very little to run and it all depends on the level of education and customisation you need.
A financial wellbeing strategy doesn't need to be complicated or expensive. It needs to start with what your people actually need, cover everyday pressures as well as the long term, and make the right thing easy to do every payday.
If you'd like to see how pay, savings and pensions can work together for your people, book a demo.
Support for three everyday needs: getting to payday, building a savings safety net and planning for later life. Add financial education, clear signposting to free help, a plan for communicating it and a way to measure whether it's working.
Start by finding out what your people need, using data you already hold and a short anonymous survey. Then choose support that covers day-to-day pressures, savings and pensions, make it work automatically on payday where you can, tell people about it and measure the results.
Money worries affect focus, absence and retention. In October 2026, 67% of employees told Hymans Robertson that money worries affect their productivity. A strategy makes sure support is joined up and actually used.