Description of the programme

The Money Guiders programme aims to improve the quality of money guidance delivered across the UK. This programme pilot targeted public benefit organisations covering a wide range of sectors. 101 pilot partners and 1900 practitioners registered for the pilot which tested four core programme components: Money guidance competency framework; Partner engagement; Learning Hub; UK Money Guider Network.

The study

Overall aim:

• To assess the effectiveness of the Financial First Aiders (FFA) pilot at YBS, to demonstrate how it worked, and to understand the intervention’s capacity to scale.

The evaluation aimed to answer four main research questions:

1. Will people use the FFA service?
   • What factors influenced the uptake of the service?
2. Will the FFA service work?
   • What factors influenced the FFAs’ ability to gain and implement the relevant skills for their role?
3. Is the FFA service technically feasible and commercially viable?
   • What types of resources were needed to implement the service?
4. Can lessons from the pilot be transferred, and to what context?
   • How could the FFAs service be amended in future implementations?

The FFA pilot was evaluated through a mixed-methods approach consisting of semi-structured interviews including with the FFA trainer, and a focus group with the team responsible for pilot implementation, interviews and focus groups at multiple points during the implementation with the FFAs themselves; two surveys for the FFAs; interviews with FFAs’ managers and potential FFA end users; a survey with YBS staff; and an analysis of YBS’ administrative data.

Key findings

• The pilot recruited 20 FFA volunteers from YBS employees. Key success factors for recruitment included that volunteers considered the FFA service to be highly relevant to employees and were encouraged to sign up by line managers.

• The training content was developed under close collaboration between MaPS, YBS, and QSA and tailored to the volunteers’ experiences and skills. While the training was well received, FFAs felt that it didn’t prepare them well enough for the signposting aspects of the role.

• Once the service was launched, promotion of the service was hampered by limited internal communication channels and the lack of relevant case studies.

• Other factors contributing to limited uptake were the perception that case studies and FFAs were not relatable enough, perceived misalignments between the FFA service offering and employee needs (some of whom would have preferred receiving advice rather than just guidance), and low support for FFAs themselves.
• Given that YBS is a financial services firm itself and employees are expected to be financially savvy, some potential beneficiaries were likely put off from using the service since doing so would effectively amount to admitting that they were not financially secure.
• COVID-related disruptions further complicated delivery, as sessions that were originally planned to be face-to-face had to be delivered in a digital format. Nonetheless, FFAs carried out a series of guidance sessions, with one particularly prolific FFA showing that the service had the potential to reach more employees.
• The service continues to be viewed as a valuable component of YBS’ broader wellbeing offering.

Points to consider

• The project was focused on the implementation and functioning of the different components of the FFA service, rather than on what the impact of the FFA service on users was.
  • The service was launched and delivered amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • Only 13 YBS colleagues received support from FFAs, limiting the amount of evidence available regarding the delivery of the support.
  • Due to recruitment challenges and the fact that end users remained anonymous, it was not possible to include end users in the final sample of the evaluation.
  • Completion rates for the surveys which were to be filled by FFAs were low (10 out of 20 FFAs for the post-training survey, and 59 responses in the 19 weekly surveys out of 380 potential responses).
  • Some potential participants declined to participate in the evaluation, and the recruitment process for qualitative activities generally yielded fairly low numbers of volunteers, which didn’t allow for purposive sampling of evaluation participants.
• This pilot of the FFA service was implemented only at YBS without a comparison group.
• This report will be useful to guide policy makers, research organisations, and the wider financial service industry when it comes to designing and implementing wellbeing policies for the UK workforce.
  • It will be of particular use to employers who are looking to implement financial wellbeing programmes for their employees, by signposting key needs that employees report, and factors that facilitate or act as barriers to take-up.