Financial pressure at home is following employees to their desks
Employees rarely leave their bank balance at the front door when they clock in. For a growing number of workers across Australia and New Zealand, financial pressure is arriving at the office alongside them, and it is beginning to show up in how they perform once they get there, according to new findings from Reward Gateway | Edenred's Cost of Not Living Report.
Kylie Terrell, director of consultancy, APAC, for Reward Gateway Australia and Christopher James, marketing and insights director, APAC, at Reward Gateway Australia, will be speaking at a Zoom webinar on the topic above and more, hosted by sponsor Reward Gateway Australia on August 26 at 11am AEST. To find out details and to register, click here.
When personal finances become a business problem
What was once treated as a private matter outside the workplace is now shaping what happens inside it. "What may once have been seen as a personal financial issue is increasingly becoming a workforce issue," said James.
The scale of that shift is laid out in the Cost of Not Living Report. More than a third of employees, 36%, say they feel less engaged because of cost-of-living pressures. Productivity is affected too: 61% of Australian employees and 64% of New Zealand employees report that financial stress has changed how they perform at work.
James pointed to what that means for the people managing those teams. "For HR leaders, that means economic pressure is no longer sitting outside the workplace, it's actively shaping the employee experience within it," he said.
Retention is the next domino to fall. Roughly a third of employees, 32%, say they are considering leaving their job over poor pay, at a time when many organisations have little room to move on salaries. That combination puts HR teams in a difficult position: staff want more money, budgets are tight, and morale is already under strain before either side sits down to talk about it.
Terrell described the position many HR professionals now find themselves in. "HR professionals are facing a balancing act, responding to rising employee need, protecting organisational performance, and doing so in a commercially sustainable way," she said.
Why discounts and benefits are doing more work
If pay reviews are off the table, employees are telling employers exactly where else they would like to see support show up. Across the region, 73% of ANZ employees say employer-provided discounts and cost-of-living support matter when they are weighing up a new job offer. The retention effect is just as clear: 67% of Australian employees and 63% of New Zealand employees say they would be more likely to stay with their current employer if discounts were part of the package.
Terrell said many employers are underestimating how visible their existing support already is, or is not, to staff. "In many organisations, the challenge is not a lack of care, but a lack of visibility into what employees actually need most," she said.
That gap between intention and awareness is where Terrell believes the most immediate gains sit. Rather than waiting for a new benefits programme to be designed from scratch, she pointed to smaller, faster moves employers can make with what they already have. "The organisations that respond best will be those that focus on support employees can genuinely use and feel in their day-to-day lives," she said.
Listening better is the starting point for most of that work. Reviewing benefit uptake, tracking absenteeism patterns, watching retention risk indicators and asking managers what they are hearing on the ground all give HR teams a clearer picture of where financial strain is actually landing, rather than where it is assumed to be landing.
James said the aim of the research was to give leaders something more concrete than intuition to work from. "Employees are clearly signalling that they want more practical help," he said.
What leaders can realistically do next
None of this requires HR teams to solve the broader economic picture, and Terrell was direct about where the limits of their influence sit. "HR professionals can't control the economy, but they can influence how supported employees feel through it," she said.
That distinction matters for how the session is likely to land with a business audience. Rather than framing financial wellbeing as a cost centre, the Cost of Not Living Report treats it as a lever connected to output, culture and attrition, three things every finance leader already tracks closely.
Practically, that means auditing whether current benefits still match what staff actually value, making support easier to find and use, giving managers the tools and confidence to have direct conversations about financial stress, and treating discounts and Total Rewards communication as part of the Employee Value Proposition rather than an afterthought to it.
Terrell said the payoff for getting this right extends well beyond any single financial quarter. "Ultimately, the value of the session is in helping HR professionals feel better equipped to lead through uncertainty, with a stronger understanding of the risks, the opportunities, and the practical steps they can take to support employees while also protecting organisational performance," she said.
For organisations trying to hold on to staff while salary budgets stay flat, that combination of research and practical response is likely to be the more useful takeaway than any single statistic on its own.
The webinar will take place virtually on August 26 at 11am AEST. To find out more and to register, click here.
