Having won a Make A Difference Award for ‘Best Financial Wellbeing Strategy’ in 2023, Brewers Decorators Centres has continued to build on its award-winning work on this front as its frontline retail workers, in particular, struggle with the impact of a continuing cost of living crisis (photo is of Brewers’ employees participating in the Mental Health Foundation’s ‘Wear It Green’ Day, part of Mental Health Awareness Week).
Jane Clifford, People Director, Brewers will be talking about this, and how to build a financially fit workforce in 2025 through tailored benefits, at day The Watercooler Event in London in May.
Jane will be speaking on Day 2 of The Watercooler Event, on 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, which is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to creating workplaces that empower both people and business to thrive.
Now in its fourth year, it’s two days of cutting-edge employee health, wellbeing, workplace culture, networking and product discovery – celebrating the future of work. Co-located with The Office Event for the full 360 degree workplace experience.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
We caught up with her ahead of her appearance at The Watercooler to find out more….
You recently relaunched your DEI offering, is that right?
Yes. We relaunched it in September 2023 under the umbrella of ‘Together’. We wanted to find ways to engage our people that didn’t necessarily cost the earth, and were accessible to our diverse range of over 200 small sites of retail workers.
Can you tell me about some of the accessible new ways you found to engage your employees?
A simple example is our quizzes. Like the one we ran in Pride Month. The questions were educational, or raised awareness, or were simply fun, to get people involved. Winners were sent a big rainbow cake.
Any other practical, accessible ideas like these for smaller businesses?
A really nice idea which cost us less than £100 was the ‘Together Awards’. I bought wooden awards and got our graphic design team internally to create a fantastic logo. Then we asked our people to nominate colleagues who they felt embodied the values of ‘togetherness’.
We received about 40 nominations and they were lovely to read, all about people who felt included, or listened to, by their colleagues. All nominees also received a special certificate thanking them, too.
This worked particularly well because you’d then see pictures of people with their awards popping up on LinkedIn. Employees also started creating an occasion around handing out awards when a senior manager visited their branch, for example.
We also compiled the photos in one of our weekly updates, listing all the nominees as well as winners. It worked so well we’re going to do it again this year.
What major Health and Wellbeing challenges do you face as People Director?
Reaching team members who are out on the road delivering products who don’t have an email address or a laptop. This year we’re hoping to introduce a new internal communications system to overcome this challenge.
Getting people to tap into what we already offer, like our retail trust EAP and our virtual GP service is also challenging. That’s why we ran an awareness week recently about the mental health resources we offer.
We asked questions like ‘do you know that our retail trust EAP also offers counselling for children?’ explaining that we understand that, when a family is in distress, this impacts you at work. We also kept talking about the fact resources like the EAP are completely confidential because there are always employees who will be wary about this.
You’ve also been focusing on training line managers in Health and Wellbeing, too, is that right?
Yes. We’ve got 200 sites and not every one has a Mental Health First Aid trainer, but we wanted to make sure all the managers got some training, as we’d identified that needed more support.
We don’t expect them to solve problems, but we do want them to be able to support someone in the moment and signpost them to help. That’s what we wanted the training to focus on – so not as detailed as Mental Health First Aid training, but still starting a discussion on the topic.
How did you identify that line managers needed more help on Health and Wellbeing?
We did a colleague survey last summer and we had over 800 responses, with some responses saying things like ‘it can be a bit lonely being a manager’ or ‘there is all this support but we don’t know who immediately to turn to’. So we wanted to give them more support and confidence, and also bring them together for peer support.
How did you give your line managers this extra support?
We invited every one of our 200 branch managers, plus senior managers, to a one day in person DEI training last year, which was a big investment for us.
Senior management understood that we needed to do that in order to instigate a complete reset; they also understood how fundamental it is to get managers on board because they are such key stakeholders.
We also held some open webinars, for everyone, on topics like neurodiversity, suicide prevention and menopause, which any colleague could access.
What is the training plan for 2025?
We are delivering an online course for managers, but it’s one where you’re expected to contribute, rather than sit there passively! The idea is to get our managers to a level of knowledge where they know where to turn when one of their colleagues needs support.
We’ve chosen a training that takes an hour and a quarter, via a company called Active Bystander, and it’s being delivered to branch managers, as well as senior managers. It covers DEI, but also goes into topics like bullying, harassment and speaking up.
At the Watercooler you are going to be talking about Financial Wellbeing, which has also been an area of focus for you. Can you tell me why this is, and what you’re doing?
The focus came with the cost of living crisis. But, even before then, our business has always taken the approach of trying to support and help colleagues financially. We’ve always had ‘emergency loans’, but we were historically not particularly good at advertising them.
We’ve now given these loans a name – Helping Hands Loans. It sounds silly, but sometimes giving something a name makes it a lot easier to talk about!
Have you noticed more employees talking about your loans now?
Yes. Definitely. Especially because we also relaunched our benefits booklet at the same time and made sure every colleague has a copy of it. This includes a really mini synopsis of all the resources we offer.
We felt it was important to put something in colleagues’ hands rather than just being on the internet, or just something managers knew about. It creates a talking point and we know that word of mouth is one of the best communication channels there is.
What is the Helping Hands Loan?
It’s an interest free loan up to the value of £1500 for colleagues who have a specific need. It can’t just be ‘I want to go away for a weekend’. It has to be something like urgent house repairs, or something that prevents further financial hardship down the line.
It’s for people struggling to get credit, and they’ve been very popular. Currently, we have 30 loans on our system.
What other Financial Wellbeing tools or benefits have proved popular?
Salary advancement has been really popular. After all, it’s the people’s money – who are we to gate keep when they get it? They can access 50% of their pay early, as they earn it.
It was really important to me that we could give our employees salary advancement but only with the education and independent advice that we have ensured comes with it, via our provider Wagestream. We launched this at a manager’s meeting in 2022.
What sold it to me is data from Wagestream that shows it reduces the amount of payday loans people take out by around 89%, which they might otherwise be taking out from loan sharks or places that will charge them extortionate APRs, which has a spiralling impact on people’s financial situations.
Taking Wagestream on has really paid off because our survey also shows that 75% of our people feel more in control now of their money as a result.
According to the last monthly update, we have 296 employees saving via a Wagestream savings account and 250 are accessing flexible pay, with 54 having taken some kind of financial education.
Loans via Wagestream are also popular. We have 38 employees who have taken out loans with them but we don’t even know who those people are, because it’s all confidential.
Wagestream is one of the companies that I found easiest to work with. Their implementation was really excellent and supportive. Our adoption rate is over 40%.
Have you got any more data on how the benefits have affected how your people feel about your organisation?
Yes. We’ve asked them what makes Brewers a great place to work and certain benefits like Wagestream and Medicash are always mentioned. They also mention ‘supportive management’ and the fact that they feel Brewers ‘feels like a company that respects workers a lot more than corporate companies’.
Where do you get your empathy from, which is obvious when you speak about supporting employees’ Financial Wellbeing?
I’m lucky to be in a comfortable position in my life now, but that’s not always been the case. Money certainly wasn’t free and easy in my childhood. Even in my twenties, I remember that sense of fear when you take your car to get its MOT and you wonder if it’s going to be alright. Or that fear about how you are going to get the money for a blown-out tyre two days before payday. That’s why I’m so encouraged at the number of employees starting up saving pots through our benefits.
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