With this in mind, and for Stress Awareness Month (April), PayCaptain – a Cloud-based payroll software solution – shares tips on how to help employees struggling with financial stress.

Simon Bocca, Founder of PayCaptain, commented: “Financial stress is often found in the workplace and can affect both employees and employers. Employees may experience increased absenteeism and presenteeism, resulting in reduced productivity and effectiveness. This issue is common and carries substantial costs for employers in the UK, not only in terms of lost productivity but also due to the impact on employee's wellbeing and job satisfaction. Financial stress can also lead to a dangerous cycle where employees' physical and mental health gets worse, further impacting their job performance.”

Recognising the signs of stress is the first step – by identifying these indicators, employers can provide timely support.These signs can include:

• Increased absenteeism
• Reduced productivity
• Employees becoming withdrawn from social interactions
• Employees requesting emergency payments to help them through the month

Bocca added: “As well as recognising the signs that someone might be struggling, creating a stress-aware and supportive work environment is equally crucial. This can be achieved in various ways, including offering financial wellness programs, flexible working arrangements and encouraging open communication. Workplace stress reduction programs, which can include yoga classes, mindfulness sessions and stress management workshops, can significantly contribute to employee wellbeing and overall increased productivity.

“Low financial resilience and financial stress are very real issues that are facing employees in the workforce. This has a huge impact, not only on employees, but on employers too. It’s in everyone’s interest to offer solutions to support employees to improve their financial well-being. We place emphasis on helping employees manage their money better, which reduces the negative effects of financial stress in the workplace.”

Four proven ways you can increase your company's productivity by supporting your employees' mental health:

1. Promote a healthy work-life balance

• Offering mental health focused employee benefits
• Creating a healthy and transparent workplace culture
• Introducing flexible working policies

2. Provide employees support around their financial wellbeing
3. Create opportunities for community building
4. Ensure your management team is adequately trained to spot and deal with mental health challenges

PayCaptain contains functionality to help employees manage their money better and build financial resilience. These include a benefits entitlement checker, payment splitting, money planning tools, savings, personalised financial guidance, and access to emergency cash.

Bocca shared: “PayCaptain’s Emergency Cash is where an employee is able to access a proportion of their accrued earnings ahead of pay day at no cost. This can help ease the burden of a financial shortfall, help employees to avoid using high cost credit and ensure employees can meet their short-term financial obligations. Various forms of on-demand pay have grown in availability over the past few years and can be a lifeline.

“When employees are struggling with financial stress, there is a huge impact on both employee and employer. There is a costly financial implication to businesses in both absenteeism and presenteeism, which can be addressed by offering solutions and support to employees to improve their financial wellbeing. With reduced absenteeism and an increase in morale, company-wide communication and productivity, financial wellness really is a must have employee benefit – not only for the health of the employee, but also for the health of the business.”