Add CategoryRead on to see how to go about helping young employees better manage money.
Tailor to them
Make sure you focus on financial issues of relevance to your employees. For young people, that generally includes:
· Saving for a property deposit – including use of government grants and the First Home Super Saver (FHSS) Scheme
· The impacts of having kids on their living costs and earning capacity
· Understanding how their credit score works
· The long-term benefits of taking an active interest in their superannuation
· The risks of accruing bad debts early in life, such as credit cards
· The role of insurances and whether they can lock in prices or benefits from a young age
· Basic budgeting – how much does that daily coffee cost over a year?
Also look at their current role and future career. What aspects of the business are they most exposed to now? What will they need to know if they are promoted?
This might include inventory control, purchasing agreements, labour costs associated with rostering, marketing expenditure and budgeting.
Employees will be more interested in learning if they can see how the training impacts not only how they do their current job but also their future career progression.
Facilitate introductions
Young people often don’t seek advice simply because they don’t know where to get it. As an employer, you could facilitate these introductions to get the ball rolling.
For instance, I have given numerous workplace presentations coinciding with International Women’s Day, exploring the common money problems women face and steps they can take to improve their own situation.
Other topics may include how to start investing, create a will and tips for saving. Meanwhile accountants can discuss tax-effective strategies and occupation-specific deductions.
If face-to-face isn’t possible under Covid restrictions or geographic reach, consider virtual options: Facebook Live presentations or interactive webinars.
Just ensure that whoever you introduce staff to is suitably qualified and experienced – only licenced professionals are qualified to give financial advice or tax advice.
Provide resources
Empower your teams to embrace self-education, which they can do in their own time.
Consider gifting them books from credible authors on how to manage money. Embrace young people’s love of apps by offering subscriptions to reputable apps for tracking their spending.
These don’t cost the business much – and may be tax deductible – but can offer great insights for young employees starting their working lives.
Having said that, include a warning to staff not to believe everything they read: there are plenty of self-proclaimed experts who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk.
Practical demonstrations
It’s often said that there’s no better way of learning than doing: training is much more powerful when it moves from theoretical to lived experience.
For example, many retailers use Afterpay or other buy-now-pay-later schemes. But how many of your employees actually know how they work and the risks of missing payments?
Exploring this with them not only aids their personal finances, but they will be more informed on how this aspect of the business works and why it is offered to customers.
You can also make demonstrations more relatable by integrating your own experience. How did you finance your business in its early days? What would you do differently if given the chance? What tips can you share that worked well for you?
Create new habits
One-off discussions or resources are a good start, but repetition is key to reinforcing those lessons.
Consider making money a discussion point in team meetings. Make presentations a monthly or quarterly occurrence as part of your standard training regime. Provide regular business updates so staff learn how their everyday work impacts the business’s bottom line.
Keep your staff thinking about money and demonstrating the impacts of their decisions. This will create the good habits that will serve them – and your business – well into the future!