Gerald Eve boosts financial education

EXCLUSIVE: Gerald Eve has boosted financial awareness among its 360 employees after holding a number of age-based and one-to-one financial education sessions.

The chartered surveyor’s financial education programme, provided by Hargreaves Lansdown, has switched its focus to helping employees deal with stress around personal finances. It has achieved attendance rates of 33%.

The onsite sessions were segmented to target different age groups within the organisation’s employee population. 

For example, sessions for employees under 30 focused on how to control the household budget, repaying student loans, targeting a savings goal and how to get on the property ladder.

Meanwhile, for older members of the workforce, sessions focused on when to retire, targeting an income needed for retirement and how to access pension savings flexibly.

One-to-one meetings enabled staff to ask questions and employees were also shown how to use calculator tools to help with household budgeting, saving for short-term goals and retirement saving.

A survey of its workforce after the sessions found that 97% of employees feel more confident in understanding how to manage their money.

In addition, 97% are also more likely to consider setting their own personal financial goals and 84% understand more about how to manage any debt they may have.

The survey also found:

• 68% of staff are more likely to choose their own investments in their workplace pension scheme.
• 96% are more likely to consider saving alongside their pension.

Sarah Draper, HR director at Gerald Eve, said: “We are delighted with the results of this latest round of financial education sessions.

“Our staff are already engaged with their pension, but we wanted to be able to offer more in the way of financial education.

“We have worked hard on the content of these sessions with Hargreaves Lansdown, so to see this feedback is really rewarding.

“Pleasingly, it was the youngest members of our workforce that seemed to get the most from the sessions.

“This is great because these have tended to be the group that have least engaged with our pension to date. We are already looking forward to how we can build on this.”