Case study: SIA Engineering

Difficult economic conditions are prompting many employers to change their approach to financial wellbeing to support their people through tough times. While increasing pay may be the most direct choice of options, it might not always be possible when budgets are tight, nor, on its own, may it be enough. Instead, organisations are redefining their benefits packages to help employees in new, innovative ways.

Enabling financial awareness is an important aspect for supporting an employee’s overall wellbeing during a cost-of-living crisis. To ensure that the support is relevant to individual needs, it is important to recognise that these needs are changing at employees’ different life stages. Understanding this allows for the creation of actionable steps that improve financial awareness for everyone in the workplace.

Organisation: A Singapore-based aerospace company

Industry: Aerospace

Size: >1,000

The company understood that supporting their employees’ financial awareness was an important aspect of supporting their overall wellbeing. They recognised that their employees have changing needs throughout different life stages and it is important to provide support throughout those stages.

They launched a scheme where they host talks by advisors in relevant sectors, such as retirement planning and medical insurance in order to support their employees’ knowledge in these areas.

What programme or action did you take to support your employees' financial wellbeing?

Lunch time talks form the bulk of our programmes. These are scheduled talks from financial advisors. All staff are free to sign up for these talks and, since it is held over the lunch hour, a bento lunch is provided for all attendees.

Examples of the talks include:

Retirement planning
Medical insurance coverage options eg including some with investment/endowment funds

Going forward, a course on retirement planning will be incorporated within the Corporate Learning Roadmap as a formal programme within the training plan.

What were some of the factors that prompted you to take this action?

We noticed that retirement planning within certain segments of our workforce was poor or had not happened at all. Without retirement planning, some of the common challenges which our retiring/retired employees face include:

No medical insurance coverage and unable to purchase new medical insurance coverage
Appeals for continued employment as they could not afford to retire
Appeals for loans to tide over financial difficulties
Poor financial decisions prior to retirement

What challenges were there or special considerations to weigh in implementing the action? How were they dealt with?

With the extension of retirement and re-employment age, a sizeable segment of our workforce (employed) was not particularly concerned about their long-term financial wellbeing or actively planning for retirement. Many assumed they will continue to be re-employed into old age and do not actively plan for their retirement.

For example, in the past, when retirement age was 60 years old (without re-employment), employees planned for their retirement actively.

Currently, retirement planning has lost its priority.

How did the rollout happen?

Lunchtime talks – HR scheduled such talks within an annual calendar of lunchtime talks. Such talks are publicised in the employee portal to inform the workforce and enable them to register.

Registrations and interests for such talks have not been overwhelming. However, we recognise the importance of financial awareness towards employee wellbeing. Therefore, a decision was taken to formalise retirement planning as a training course.

Going forward, Retirement Planning will be a course within the Corporate Learning Roadmap, and employees may be nominated to attend this course during the annual training nomination exercise.

What has been the response/results to your action?

Were there any lessons learned or advice you would give to other HR teams exploring their options?

Look at employee wellbeing beyond their employment with the company, particularly for long-serving employees. Recognise different levels of awareness and needs of different segments of the workforce. Finally, sustain the programme and tailor it to the evolving landscape to remain relevant with the times, such as policy changes specific to Singapore’s context (CPF, re-employment, medical insurance etc.)