Group Life Cover, Income Protection & Financial Wellbeing
Your team are the most important part of your business, without them, you can’t service your customers and deliver great products or services.
Richard Branson has been well covered in coining two phrases:-
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
“If you look after your staff, they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple.”
How to best cover your team should they die
There are only two certainties in life, Death & Taxes (Benjamin Franklin). Death is a morbid subject, one that is often ignored but when it happens, it can cause devastating effects to your team and their families.
Having a Group Life Scheme ensures that employees families can receive a lump sum on death.
In addition to protecting your employee’s lives, there are a number of business benefits of having such a scheme in place.
- It improves retention by increasing their Benefit package
- It’s not a Benefit in Kind
- It’s a tax-deductible business expense
- Your staff don’t have to be medically underwritten
- You can provide different levels of cover to different teams within your organisation
- Claims usually take a few days to pay out
- It’s actually a lot cheaper than you think
- It can be a good way for directors and senior managers to increase their life cover relatively cheaply compared to a standard life insurance
Providing income for staff for long term illness
When staff members are off ill for a long time it can be difficult for them from a financial point of view. Most companies have a very basic sick pay policy but want to look after their team in the event of their illness.
There are a couple of ways to address this:-
- Group Income Protection – Introduction of a group income protection policy will pay out a benefit to the company, usually 60% of the gross salary to pay the employee in the event of their illness. The benefit can be paid indefinitely also giving your team a substantial protection in the event of long term illness when they need it most.
- Sick Pay Policy & Sick Scheme – A personal accident and sickness policy can pay out a fixed benefit after a deferment period (minimum 2 weeks). This is usually a low-level benefit and pays out for a short term. Combining this with an enhanced sick pay policy from the company allows your team at least some security if they are off sick for an extended period.
Giving your team the support they need
Having a wellness programme in place at your workplace can be a fantastic way to help your employees deal with day to day lives. This not only helps with your duty of care to each of your team but has a positive impact for the company culture and productivity.
Whilst it’s hard to have the time and resources to put a full wellness programme in place one easy step into this is to have an external employee assistance programme in place.
This is usually a free phone and/or web access to experts to help with a number of topics usually into these categories:-
- Money
- Family
- Mental Health
- Legal
- Health
- Addiction
- Work
There is usually no limit on how many times your team can use the service and it is completely confidential. As an employer you would just get statistics on how often the service was accessed but not who and what was accessed.
Give your team financial wellness training to create more productivity
Financial Security is the second pillar in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that money worries were the biggest source of stress to UK employees.
In a recent study it was shown 67% of employees take time at work to sort out their finances.
You provide your team with a salary, expenses and pension benefits. By using Financial Wellness training you can educate your team into understanding how to best structure their finances.
“Employers have a vested interest in helping their employees improve their financial well-being: reducing financial worries amongst employees could raise staff morale (and performance), increase trust between employers and employees, and improve retention levels. Using the workplace as a conduit for financial help offers a win-win opportunity for employees and employers” – FCA
By introducing a financial wellness programme into your business it can provide a number of benefits:
- Reduces stress
- Helps with morale and engagement
- Increases retention
- Helps attract talent
- More productivity
