AXA - Be Life Confident

AXA is asking all employers to get involved in My Budget Day, which is a national initiative being launched by the company to encourage all UK adults to commit one hour a month to sorting out their finances in a bid to make individuals more motivated to dealing with money. The scheme has received the support of Richard Lambert at the CBI and the UK's largest union Unite.

AXA is concerned that adults are not motivated enough to spend an hour of their free time trying to better manage their money, and is therefore asking employers to help kick-start the programme by allowing their employees to spend the first hour while they are at work. AXA has already pledged the hour to its 12,000 employees.

Steve Folkard of AXA said: "Money is one of the major causes of stress for adults and as such it is a major cause of employee absenteeism. The annual cost of stress to UK plc is estimated to be around £9.6 billion³. That's equivalent to £18,264.84 per second or £329.89 per employee⁴. It is AXA's belief that rather than adding to the cost of running a business, encouraging adults to take greater control of their finances could actually go some way to reducing not only the UK's levels of personal debt, but also the cost of stress to UK businesses."

Getting UK business on board though is expected to be a challenge, whilst four in ten businesses surveyed by AXA² said they would give their employees an hour of work time to spend improving their finances, just over half (51.9%) refused. However, to help get businesses started AXA has devised a new financial website www.axa.co.uk/mybudgetday offering advice on how to get involved. From 21 November the site will feature a new set of financial planning tools that can be used by to help kick-start people in the first hour.

Steve Folkard continued: "No-one said it was going to be easy to start a financial education programme in the workplace, and we appreciate that an hour of working time comes at a cost. However, we know that employees are already costing their employers some £1.08 billion⁴ every week by wasting time on non-work related activities including gossiping, texting, logging onto social networking sites and emailing friends and family – that's 40 minutes a day.

"If businesses are prepared to let their employees spend over 3 hours a month wasting their time on text messages then asking them to dedicate just one of those hours to helping their employees alleviate their money worries doesn't seem like a lot to ask."

Richard Lambert, Director General of the CBI commented, "My Budget Day is a breath of fresh air and should be seen as a new and innovative way for employers to engage with and motivate their workforce. It is a brilliant example of corporate responsibility in action and shows how an employer's role really can extend beyond getting the job done."

AXA has set up a dedicated "Information for Businesses" section on the My Budget Day website (www.axa.co.uk/mybudgetday) which provides all the details an employer needs to roll out a financial education programme in their workplace.

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