The week commencing 29th January saw the official launch of our employee focused project, CashWise! CashWise is a new financial skills programme designed to support employees in improving and maintaining financial health and confidence.
Funded by the Money Advice Service, the project is delivered on-site to employees in a relaxed learning setting. Employees taking part in the training will typically engage on a monthly basis, attending a one-hour workshop per month, on topics including spending, budgeting, debt and credit, pensions and savings etc. Volunteers from the Financial Conduct Authority delivered our very first workshop ‘Me and my money’ to two groups of employees at our corporate partner, Broadgate, and we have since launched at the chef’s academy at CH&Co, a large catering company. The workshops have been really well received with excellent feedback on both delivery and content, with one attendee from CH&Co’s chef’s academy stating:
“This has been really good, I think all employers should have this for their employees, it’s so helpful!”
To ensure that we are delivering value, we have a robust evaluation process in place which includes questionnaires for attendees to anonymously identify their feelings and confidence around their financial situation at the start of the course, and then again upon completion. So far we have identified a number of recurring themes around the impact of financial insecurity, which include but are not limited to, negative impacts on mental health with stress, anxiety and low mood being identified, a general feeling of ‘getting by alright’ or ‘just about getting by’ as well as a reluctance to seeking external support and advice on finances outside of immediate friends and family. We hope that engagement in CashWise will be the starting point for individuals to work towards reducing some of these negative impacts and we will continue to monitor responses and make comparisons as our first groups complete the programme in the summer.
We will continue to work through the programme with these groups as we launch with several other organisations at intervals throughout this year- watch this space!
We are always looking for corporate volunteers to help with the delivery of the programme, which will be running until December 2018, so if you’re a keen, confident, empathetic presenter and would like to support the financial wellbeing of ‘lower income’ employees, do get in touch with our Project Manager Kerrie! We ask for a commitment of just one workshop initially and if you enjoy your experience we hope that you would come back for more!
Contact: kerrie.smith@elba-1.org.uk or call 07939010008.
