Hot Topic – Is the Cost of Living Crisis affecting your workplace?
Hot Topic – Is the Cost of Living Crisis affecting your workplace?
Throughout the UK, people are trying to find ways to cover their regular, basic household bills on falling real wages. Due to the cost of living crisis, people are finding it challenging to make ends meet, despite working hard and earning what many would consider to be a reasonable income.
High rates of inflation, rising energy costs and the continuing impact of Covid 19 have all led to budgets shrinking in proportion to the cost of everyday expenses. Even for some people in regular employment this has meant cutting back on everyday essentials such as heating the house or putting food on the table. The use of foodbanks among those in work in the UK is on the rise, according to the Trussell Trust.
And if people in work are struggling to make ends meet, there is an inevitable impact on their employers. Employees experiencing financial hardships are likely to be less productive as worries outside of work are a distraction. They may also be looking to move for a higher salary or seek to negotiate a pay increase with their current employer, so there are obviously negative effects on the bottom line. More importantly, employers should be helping where they can because employees are people going through a difficult time and offering assistance is the right thing to do.
So what should employers do to help? As is so often the case, good communication is a sensible starting place. Find out how employees are affected and what would be most valuable to your workforce. It may be that financial education together with more general counselling will have a meaningful impact. There are then a range or practical options which employers may be able to implement from discount schemes to workplace foodbanks and “take what you need” essentials boxes.
If you have employees who are experiencing difficulties due to the cost of living crisis, you can signpost them to general government support, Help for Households or support from debt charity Step Change.
Sam Barnes
Sales Director