Month: April 2026

Leading during the Hard Moments: Supporting Teams Through Redundancy

Leading during the Hard Moments: Supporting Teams Through Redundancy

April 24, 2026

Aoife Mollin

Redundancy decisions are never easy and sometimes are outside of your control as a leader. Yet across the tech sector and beyond, they have become a reality many leaders now face. Economic pressure, shifting market demands, restructuring, and mergers have led to widespread workforce reductions over the past number of years.

What sets strong leadership apart in these moments is not the decision itself, but how people are led through it.

Redundancies affect far more than those who leave. They create uncertainty, emotional stress, and disruption across entire teams. For leaders, the challenge is navigating complexity: balancing empathy with clarity, compassion with performance, and short‑term delivery with long‑term trust.

How leaders show up in these moments leaves a lasting impact on culture.

The Leadership Impact of Redundancy

Redundancies test leadership credibility. Employees are watching closely:

  • How transparent are leaders?
  • How are people treated as they leave?
  • Is there honesty about what comes next?
  • Do leaders acknowledge the human impact, or avoid it?

People don’t expect leaders to have all the answers. They do expect integrity, consistency, and presence.

Handled poorly, redundancies can lead to disengagement, increased attrition, and a breakdown in trust. Handled well, they can — paradoxically — strengthen belief in leadership and create a more resilient organisation.

Leading Those Who Are Leaving

How an organisation supports people through redundancy sends a clear signal about its values.

Leaders who prioritise dignity and clarity for those exiting create a ripple effect of trust among those who remain. This is not just about process; it’s about how people feel when they leave.

Effective leadership support includes:

  • Clarity and respect in communication, avoiding uncertainty or mixed messages
  • Practical transition support, such as career coaching or outplacement, to help individuals move forward confidently
  • Recognition of contribution, acknowledging the value people have added — even when the business direction changes
  • Emotional awareness, understanding that redundancy is not just a professional loss, but often a personal one

Leaders don’t need to over‑explain decisions, but they do need to show that people matter beyond their role.

Leading Those Who Remain

Once redundancies are announced, the leadership challenge increases.

Remaining employees experience “survivor syndrome”: guilt, anxiety, and questions about their own future. At the same time, leaders may need the team to take on more responsibility, adapt quickly, and maintain momentum. This is where leadership attention matters most.

If uncertainty is left unaddressed, motivation and performance decline. Research has shown that downsizing a workforce of 1% can lead to a 31% increase in turnover in the following year. Organisations can also see a 41% decline in job satisfaction, a 36% decline in organizational commitment, and a 20% decline in job performance.

The message for leaders is clear: what happens after redundancies determines whether teams stabilise or erode.

What Effective Leaders Do Differently
1. They Communicate with Purpose, Not Perfection

During times of change, silence creates stories — and rarely positive ones.

Strong leaders communicate early, clearly, and consistently. They explain the why behind decisions, outline what is known, and are honest about what is still evolving.

Transparency doesn’t mean sharing every detail; it means avoiding false reassurance and keeping people informed of how changes affect them, their work, and the wider strategy.

Most importantly, leaders remain visible. Regular check‑ins, open dialogue, and space for questions help people feel anchored during uncertainty.

2. They Address Career Anxiety Directly

After redundancies, unspoken questions surface quickly:

  • Is my role safe?
  • Do I still have a future here?
  • Should I be looking elsewhere?

Ignoring these questions doesn’t protect morale — it erodes it.

Effective leaders make time for career conversations, not immediately, but intentionally. They help individuals understand how their role fits the future direction of the organisation, where development opportunities exist, and how career paths may evolve.

When people feel seen and invested in, engagement returns.

Career clarity is a powerful stabiliser.

3. They Balance Performance with Humanity

Leaders often feel pressure to “return to normal” quickly. But after redundancy, teams need space — not just to adjust workloads, but to process change.

Strong leaders acknowledge the emotional reality without losing momentum. They set realistic expectations, prioritise effectively, and model healthy behaviour during periods of strain.

Productivity driven by fear is short‑lived. Sustainable performance comes from clarity, trust, and psychological safety.

The Role of Career Clarity in Times of Change

One of the most overlooked aspects of redundancy is its impact on identity. Work is not just what people do; it is how many define themselves.

When teams lose colleagues — or when roles shift suddenly — individuals often begin questioning their own direction. This moment can trigger growth or disengagement, depending on the support available.

Career coaching and structured reflection help individuals regain a sense of agency. When people understand their strengths, values, and decision‑making patterns, they move from reaction to intention.

This clarity benefits both the individual and the organisation.

Leadership through the hard moments

Redundancies are among the hardest moments leaders face — not because they are operationally complex, but because they sit at the intersection of business and humanity.

The leaders who navigate them well are remembered for:

  • how clearly they communicated
  • how respectfully they treated people
  • how honestly they addressed uncertainty
  • and how intentionally they invested in those who remained

These moments define leadership far more than times of growth. Because how you lead when it’s hard is what people remember when it matters most.

At AMAResults, we believe that careers — and organisations — are built through clarity. Our programme – Career Move Strategy – is a career coaching programme designed to help individuals to get clarity on what is important to them and develop a clear career strategy that energises them. Our CHESS Method helps them to feel confident about making decisions about their future career by learning from their past choices and decisions. By understanding how they can use their strengths to make clear decisions on what they want in their career. They will have a clear vision of what is important to them, and the confidence to talk effectively about this to secure their next role – whether that is an internal or external role.  We can help individuals to move on to where they need to be, where they can continue to develop their potential and their experience in – either in their current role or in a new role.    

Click here to get our details and see how we can support your team to focus on their career strategy so that they know what job satisfaction is to them and they are committed to the organisation they work with.

This blog was originally published on https://amaresults.com and can be accessed by clicking here

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    Reasons why financial stress is a workplace risk (and how financial education reduces it)

    Why financial learning belongs in your organisation’s people strategy now

    April 22, 2026

    By Debbie Bailey

    An FD told me recently that her organisation already has financial education covered. The finance team handles it. By sharing budgeting information, explaining the basics, and answering some questions. Job done.

    What she didn’t mention, and what I already knew from working with finance people is that many personally find managing their own finances a real struggle. Being good at your job and managing organisational finances are very different to managing personal finances, where emotions and behavioural psychology come into play.

    And this difference is so important.

    The finance team can share knowledge. They can explain what a pension is, how a budget works, what auto-enrolment means. What they cannot do is address the behavioural psychology underneath why people don’t act on that knowledge. The stories employees tell themselves about money. The shame that stops someone opening a pension statement. The nervous system response that makes a financial decision feel overwhelming even when the information is right there.

    And there’s something else. Finance teams have enough on their plates. They are responsible for the profit and loss, cash flow, reporting, forecasting, the work the organisation depends on. Asking them to also deliver financial wellbeing support pulls them away from that, and into territory they were never trained for. The organisation is not getting the best from them, or from the people they are trying to help.

    Organisations put real thought into developing their people. Leadership development, skills training, technical capability, all of it has structure. Budgets are set, courses are provided, it sits inside personal development conversations and reviews.

    But this approach stops when it comes to learning about money and financial confidence.

    Financial education and wellbeing get pushed into a different category, filed under benefits, wellbeing, or HR, separate from how the business develops its people. Based on an assumption that financial confidence doesn’t impact performance.

    Some organisations believe financial wellbeing is just a personal issue, with no upside for the business and this is why it is kept separately under employee benefits. But it does. It shows up in lower focus, quieter voices in meetings and people switching off earlier than they used to.

    And right now, in 2026, the cost is higher than ever.

    Your organisation’s employees are carrying more than they realise

    Financial pressure is back at near-pandemic levels. According to the Nudge Global Financial Wellbeing Report 2025, only 29% of employees globally said they felt hopeful about their financial situation, down from 60% the year before.

    In the UK, that pressure is very practical: food costs, energy bills, housing and general global uncertainty about what’s coming next. Employees bring all these worries into the workplace, it comes into meetings, on the shop floor, into customer conversations and decision-making. It affects how much headspace people have before they even start their day.

    This distraction, tiredness and stress can cause health and safety issues, sway the way negotiations go (not necessarily consciously) and change discussions in board meetings.

    The bombardment of negative news stories, the letters from mortgage providers and landlords, the political tensions in the UK and abroad, with no idea when it will end. This pressure piles up.

    Financial health is now rated lower than physical, mental, and social health, with only 49% of people rating it as good or excellent globally. And yet it is the one area where most employers offer the least structured support.

    The employees who are struggling are not always the ones you expect. Financial stress does not stop because someone is on a higher pay grade. It impacts your entire workforce, often hidden, often managed alone, and almost always affecting performance, employers and leaders just cannot see it straight away.

    If you are thinking about how to reach employees who are struggling but not saying so, I would love to have that conversation. You can find me and get in touch here.

    The problem isn’t always who you think it is

    When organisations do think about financial wellbeing, they tend to picture a specific employee who is visibly struggling, someone who needs help right now and is maybe asking for support.

    But the data tells a more complicated story, one where employees are indifferent, not panicking but certainly not engaging or making proactive decisions for their financial situation now or in the future.

    They are avoiding looking at their pension because it doesn’t really cross their mind, they have completely switched off from it. Some assume and hope that auto-enrolment will sort it all, when we know that isn’t the case. It just doesn’t feel urgent enough to deal with today. They are not overspending out of recklessness. They are simply not making active decisions at all.

    From the outside, they look fine, but they are not really. Employees who are disengaged from their finances are less likely to use the benefits you are already funding, less likely to build any savings buffer, and less likely to be financially resilient when a life event hits; a baby, a house move, a bereavement, a parent needing support. Then suddenly they are trying to make financial decisions from a standing start, with no real knowledge or confidence in making those decisions.  By then it feels harder, heavier and more emotional than it needed to. And that means they are more stressed, sleeping less and this results in an employee who is distracted, looking at job adverts, scrolling mortgage deals at work and not fully engaged.

    The employees who need financial education, wellbeing and confidence are the ones who sit indifferently with no real reason to get started, that is until the “moment in time” hits and makes them pay attention. But do they have the resources available to make those decisions?

    These are not separate from your people strategy. They affect engagement, performance and retention directly.

    Learning at Work Week is a useful prompt

    Every May, Learning at Work Week encourages organisations to think intentionally about the skills their people need, one to do their jobs better and two to function well in their lives. What skills are missing? What gaps are getting in their way? What development would genuinely help?

    Financial skills almost never make that list. And yet financial literacy is declining as a trend, not just a gap in individual knowledge, but something we’re seeing across the UK. Most people were never taught this properly: not at school, not at home, not anywhere. The gap between knowing you should engage with your pension/finances/savings and understanding how to is a learning problem and a nervous system one.

    The research is clear on what changes when that learning happens. People with good or excellent financial literacy are 9% less stressed and 9% less anxious than those with poor literacy. They are nearly five times more likely to feel confident navigating economic change.

    That matters because organisations need people who can think clearly, engage with what is on offer and make decisions before problems become crises, which is a people strategy issue.

    If you want to explore what behaviour-led financial learning could look like for your workforce, you can reach me here.

    What it means to take this seriously as an employer

    The evidence on employer-provided financial education is compelling. Employees with access to it are more optimistic about their future. They rate their health higher across physical, mental, social, and financial wellbeing. And 36% say their relationship with their employer goes beyond purely transactional. This is a retention tool and therefore should form part of an organisation’s people strategy.

    Trust, loyalty and how valued people feel, doesn’t just come down to pay, it also comes from whether an organisation makes an employee feel valued which includes treating financial learning as something worth investing in.

    When financial learning is genuinely embedded, not a one-off webinar, not a portal nobody visits, but structured, timely, behaviour-led support, a few things shift. Benefits that were being ignored become used. Pension schemes, share plans, health cover: often ignored not because employees don’t want them, but because nobody helped them understand how they work or why they matter. Engagement improves when people have the confidence to act, which means better return on what you are already spending.

    Financial stress reduces because the organisation has given people the tools to start addressing it. It does not disappear overnight, but people are better equipped to deal with it. And when that happens, the conversation around money becomes less shameful and less reactive. That is where this ties back to people strategy.

    Because this is not just about wellbeing. It is about whether your people have the capability to perform as well as they can, whether they stay (and you continue to reap the investments you made into them), and whether the support you are already paying for actually gets used.

    The question worth asking

    If your organisation ran a skills audit tomorrow, a genuine look at the gaps affecting your people’s performance and wellbeing, financial capability would almost certainly appear near the top.

    The question is whether you treat it the same way you treat any other development need: with structure, with timing, and with the expectation that learning, done well, actually changes things.

    The organisations that do are building a workforce that is more resilient, more engaged, and better able to use what is already on offer and seeing that reflected in the numbers that matter.

    What this looks like in practice

    I work with HR and People teams to make financial wellbeing a practical part of how they support and develop their workforce. That might be workshops, group sessions, talks or something more joined-up over time. But it always starts from the same place: what is actually getting in the way of your people engaging with their finances, and what would genuinely help them move?

    That question sounds simple. But most organisations have never really asked it. They have rolled out a portal, pointed people at a webinar, ticked the box and moved on and nothing changed.

    The employees who need this most are not going to self-select into a lunchtime seminar on ISAs. They are the ones looking fine, carrying it alone and not saying much. The ones who will only engage when the support is well-timed, relevant and doesn’t feel like homework.

    If you are seeing signs of financial pressure in your workforce, disengagement, ongoing pay conversations, people who seem distracted, it is worth looking at what is sitting underneath that.

    If behaviour-led financial learning is something you want to explore for your workforce, get in touch here. 

    Reasons why financial stress is a workplace risk (and how financial education reduces it)

    Mental Health Awareness Week: Why Financial Wellbeing Matters

    April 22, 2026

    By Debbie Bailey

    This year, Mental Health Awareness Week runs from 11 to 17 May 2026, and while conversations about workplace mental health have come a long way:

    We talk about burnout, workload and culture, but there’s one driver of poor mental health at work that still gets avoided.

    Money.

    Mental health is complex, there isn’t one cause, it can be influenced by biology, life events, environment and more. The environment is where employers can make a real difference. The environment your employees walk into everyday matters, employees spend so much of their week at work. And one of the biggest pressures they carry with them? Financial stress.

    Financial pressure sits in every workplace and rarely gets directly addressed. In the UK we still have a stigma around talking about money. People will joke about their sex life at work before they’ll mention they’re struggling financially.

    The connection between financial stress and mental health is well documented. When people are worried about money, sleep suffers, concentration drops, and persistent financial anxiety can over time contribute to burnout and declining mental health. But it rarely gets named for what it is: financial stress. Instead, managers notice the employee who keep calling in sick with headaches, because they genuinely have them, from tension and broken sleep and weeks of worry. The one who seems distant in meetings, easily distracted, not quite themselves. The one suddenly asking for a pay rise, an advance on their salary, or volunteering for every overtime shift going. These are the signs. They’re easy to miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

    I’m a Financial Wellbeing Advisor and Chartered Management Accountant, not a mental health practitioner. What I can speak to is this one piece of the picture, what financial stress does inside organisations, what it costs, and what actually helps.

    When I started my first job after university, someone suggested we all go out for curry after work. It seemed like a great idea, I’d moved away for the role and didn’t know anyone. But from the moment they suggested it, I was doing the maths in my head. The car had just broken down and needed repairing. I had no idea what the rules were. Did we split the bill? What if people ordered loads? What if they ordered alcohol? I was watching everything, trying to work out what to do, while everyone else just seemed to be enjoying themselves. I was there but I wasn’t really there.

    That feeling? That’s what financial stress does at work. Every single day, for some of your people.

    Financial stress doesn’t just affect someone’s bank balance. It gets into their sleep, their confidence, their ability to concentrate, and their sense of control. And none of that stays at home when they walk through your door. It can’t. We’re human.

    If you’re a People Leader who is noticing these symptoms within your organisation and want to support employees to manage financial stress within the constraints of their salaries so that they can be more productive, effective and enjoy their role more, click here to book a call with me through my Directory listing.

    What it looks like inside your organisation

    Right now, in businesses across the UK, people are sitting in meetings, on warehouse floors, behind shop counters, carrying financial worry they haven’t told anyone about.

    They won’t bring it up. Money is still one of the things people feel most ashamed to admit they’re struggling with. And for many, they completely disconnect from it, they become indifferent.

    They turn up to everything they’re supposed to turn up to, getting through the day as best they can while carrying that weight around. The early signs are easy to miss, distraction, fatigue, reduced focus. Then it shows up in absence, mistakes, withdrawal, and eventually a resignation letter that feels like it came out of nowhere.

    According to the CIPD Good Work Index 2025, a survey of 5,000 UK employees, 31% say money worries have negatively affected their work performance. Among employees earning under £40,000, that rises to 37%. And 19% have lost sleep because of it.

    For sports and activewear businesses, where a significant proportion of your workforce sits in operational, fulfilment and retail roles, that’s not a small number. That’s a meaningful proportion of your team operating below their best, every single day.

    And it’s worth saying, this isn’t just a lower earner problem. Around 1 in 8 UK employees are living in in-work poverty despite having a job. But employees earning £100,000 and above can feel just as financially stretched, mortgage renewals, lifestyle pressures, tax changes. Financial stress doesn’t respect salary bands.

    What is it actually costing you?

    According to the most recent research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, over 3.2 million private sector workers have taken time off due to poor financial wellbeing, resulting in 16 million working days lost across the UK annually. And that’s before you factor in presenteeism, the cost of employees who are physically present but mentally elsewhere.

    To put that into context, for a business your size, if you have 100 employees earning an average of £35,000, and 12% take time off due to financial stress each year, losing around 4.7 days each, that’s roughly 56 working days lost annually to financial stress alone. At an average daily rate that’s over £7,500 in direct absence costs, before you factor in cover, the impact on the rest of the team, and the longer-term effect on productivity and morale.

    59% of UK employees admit financial concerns prevent them from performing their best at work. That’s people in your meetings, on your shop floor, in your warehouse, not giving you everything they’re capable of while the pressure builds.

    Then there’s employee turnover. Replacing an employee typically costs between a quarter and a third of their annual salary once you factor in recruitment, onboarding and the time it takes someone new to reach full productivity. Financial stress is consistently one of the reasons good people leave, they don’t dislike the job, but a small pay rise somewhere else feels like the answer. They don’t know how else to fix it.

    And there’s one more cost that often gets overlooked. You’re likely already paying for benefits your employees aren’t using, health cover, pension contributions, share schemes. Employees who feel financially overwhelmed don’t engage with these. They mean to. But it never quite makes it to the top of the list. They simply switch off, disconnect and only when something major happens, a life change, like having a baby, do they start to engage. That’s a return on investment you’re funding but not seeing.

    But this goes beyond money.

    It’s about how people feel when they wake up in the morning, how they sleep at night, and how much of that pressure they carry into work with them.

    If you’re responsible for people, wellbeing or performance, it’s worth understanding how this is already showing up in your organisation. You can find more about how I support businesses here.

    What helps and what doesn’t

    More money landing in someone’s account each month doesn’t change how they think or feel about it. I’ve seen this consistently, highly capable people managing multi-million pound budgets professionally, struggling privately with their own. We are not talking about intelligence or income. We are talking about confidence, behaviour and having the right tools.

    What works is structured, behaviour-led support. Not a resource hub that nobody clicks on. Not a link to a money comparison website. Not a one-hour session that feels useful on the day and changes nothing by Monday. Or feels like a massive in-convenience.

    65% of employees say it’s important that a future employer has a policy to support financial wellbeing when looking for their next job. The people you’re trying to attract and keep already expect this. What’s missing isn’t the intention, it’s knowing where to start.

    When employees have the knowledge, tools and confidence to feel in control of their money, you see the difference. Fewer stress-related absences. Less presenteeism. Fewer of those uncomfortable conversations about pay rises driven by panic rather than performance. Better engagement with the benefits you already offer. And staff who choose to stay because they actually feel looked after, not just paid.

    This isn’t about teaching people to budget better but about helping them feel in control of their money for the first time.

    In a typical session with me, employees might cover:

    • Understanding where their money is going each month
    • Simple systems to separate tax, bills and spending so nothing feels like a surprise
    • Clear guidance on how to make decisions around pay, debt and savings without overwhelm
    • Understanding why they avoid their finances in the first place
    • Breaking the cycle of “I know what to do, but I’m not doing it”
    • Building simple habits that make feeling in control the norm, not the exception

    Straightforward, practical and designed to get used.

    A question worth asking

    Mental Health Awareness Week exists to encourage honest conversations. So, here’s one worth having internally.

    Do you know how many of your employees are carrying financial stress right now? Not a guess, actually know?

    Most organisations don’t. And that’s not a criticism, it’s genuinely hard to see. People are good at hiding it. But the cost of not knowing is already sitting on your payroll.

    What working with me looks like

    I’m a Chartered Management Accountant and Certified Financial Coach, and I work with HR, people and finance teams in sports, fitness and activewear brands to design and deliver financial wellbeing programmes that make a genuine difference.

    That ranges from one-off keynote sessions and Lunch and Learns, to interactive workshops, group coaching and seasonal campaigns built around your wellbeing calendar. Stress awareness month, debt awareness week, the run-up to Christmas when financial pressure peaks for so many people.

    Everything is practical, jargon-free and tailored to your workforce.

    One recent employer said: “The attendees had never really encountered the money mindset before, but Debbie made the idea accessible. The session was brilliantly interactive and powerful.”

    If you’re seeing signs of financial stress in your team, whether that’s absence, disengagement or pressure around pay, the starting point is a conversation.
    You can find more about my work and get in touch here.

    Reasons why financial stress is a workplace risk (and how financial education reduces it)

    Why your financial wellbeing strategy isn’t reaching the women in your workforce

    April 1, 2026

    By Debbie Bailey

    Your organisation is likely spending hundreds of thousands every year on benefits your employees aren’t using. Pension contributions going unreviewed or not even used, opted out of at the first chance, wellbeing resources sitting unopened and some of your best people undervaluing themselves and eventually leaving for somewhere that offers them a few thousand pounds more. 

    And the bonus is, you don’t need to add more to the benefits package. The problem isn’t a lack of provision. It’s a financial confidence issue. And it’s most concentrated in one group: the women in your workforce. 

    She’s been with you for seven years. She hits her targets, she mentors others and right now, she has benefits sitting in a portal she hasn’t opened since she joined, and a pension she enrolled in at the default rate and has never reviewed. It feels important to sort, she knows that, but somehow it never quite makes it to the top of the list. That’s not laziness. That’s avoidance. And it’s far more common than most organisations realise. 

    This is the version of the women and money conversation that gender pay gap reporting doesn’t reach. The talent you’re undervaluing. The resources you’re funding that nobody is using. And the recruitment fees and lost knowledge that will follow when she eventually leaves. And it is one of the reasons your gender pay gap doesn’t close, even when your policies say it should. 

    This isn’t about how much women earn 

    Most conversations about women and money in the workplace start and stop at the pay gap. And yes, the pay gap matters, it really does. The fact that women earn less across their careers, build smaller pension pots, and carry greater financial risk from career breaks is real and significant. 

    But beneath that is something less visible and far more influential: financial confidence. 

    This is one of the hidden drivers of your gender pay gap. Not just what you pay women, but what they feel able to ask for, negotiate, and hold. This shapes how women engage with pay, pensions and long-term financial decisions. 

    And while it may feel personal, it is absolutely commercial. 

    It shows up in: 

    • distracted employees who aren’t fully present at work, with stress and lack of sleep 
    • higher absence and associated costs 
    • increased pressure on managers to handle financial concerns they aren’t equipped for 
    • lower engagement with benefits you are already funding 
    • avoidable turnover and repeated recruitment cycles 

    This isn’t just a wellbeing issue, it relates to performance, retention and cost.  

    And it doesn’t only affect women on lower salaries. Some of the women I work with are earning really well and still feel financially out of control. More income doesn’t fix a confidence problem. It often just widens the gap between how things look externally and how they feel internally. 

    Research consistently shows that women are more likely to underestimate their own financial knowledge, even when that knowledge is strong. They are more likely to defer financial decisions, avoid financial conversations, or assume that the pension, the investment, the pay negotiation, is something for someone else to deal with. The fear of asking for support can keep them stuck. 

    That doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from years of being told, directly or indirectly, that money is someone else’s domain, from households where money was managed by someone else, from schools that never covered personal finance, from a financial services industry that hasn’t spoken to or represented women. By the time those women are sitting in your workforce, the belief that finance isn’t really for them can be deeply ingrained. 

    And it shows up directly in how they engage, or don’t, with everything you already offer them. 

    Why most financial wellbeing support misses women entirely 

    When I start working with organisations, I consistently see the same thing: the financial wellbeing provision is already there. The portal exists. The EAP has a money section. There might even be a webinar series. 

    And the women in the workforce aren’t using it. 

    Because it wasn’t built with them in mind. They tell themselves they don’t have the time or that they won’t understand it. 

    Most financial wellbeing content is designed to inform.  

    Here’s how a pension works, here’s a budgeting template, here’s a video about ISAs.  

    And information, on its own, does almost nothing for someone whose core barrier isn’t knowledge, it’s confidence, shame, and a deeply held belief that getting on top of their finances is something they’ll get around to eventually, when they feel ready, when it feels less overwhelming. 

    Life doesn’t calm down. It just changes shape. And eventually becomes never. And in the meantime, your organisation continues to absorb the cost. 

    What works is starting where people actually are. That means: 

    • acknowledging the emotional side of money, not just the practical 
    • creating space where people can admit what they don’t know without judgement 
    • and keeping things simple enough that it actually gets done. 

    And critically, it means moving beyond one-off sessions. Programmes that run over a period of time work better than one-off sessions for exactly this reason, the initial motivation is just the starting point. The real work, and the real results, come from what happens after that. 

    From an organisational perspective, that shows up as: 

    • higher engagement with pensions and benefits 
    • reduced presenteeism and stress-related absence 
    • fewer reactive, panic-driven pay conversations 
    • stronger retention of experienced employees 

    This is not about replacing pay strategies. It’s about making them more effective. 

    If you’re seeing this in your organisation and want to understand what structured support could look like, I’d love to talk. You can find my listing and reach out here: https://expertservicesdirectory.com/directory/debbie-bailey 

    Why I do this work (and how it impacts organisations positively) 

    I remember the first time I wanted to ask for a pay rise. I had no idea where to start. 

    Not just how to ask. I didn’t even know asking was something people did. 

    Nobody in my world had ever negotiated a salary. So when I stepped into corporate environments where that was expected, I had no reference point. I didn’t know what was reasonable, what I was worth, or how to approach it. 

    My parents were in low-paid jobs where salary wasn’t up for negotiation. By the time I was in corporate roles, I was earning more than both of them combined and that felt really uncomfortable. I didn’t know what those roles should earn or if I was entitled to more. And when I finally did raise it and was told I’d already had a 10% increase, I went quiet. I had no reference point, no language for it and no confidence that I had the right to push back. I ended up in senior roles, significantly underpaid. 

    I also opted out of my pension when I first started working. I was fresh out of university, on low pay, and genuinely couldn’t see how I could afford it. It was my dad’s persistence, he kept at me until I opted back in. I was lucky. I know plenty of women who weren’t. 

    That’s the version of this story that doesn’t show up in gender pay gap reports. The woman who didn’t push for the salary she deserved because she didn’t know she could. The woman who deprioritised her pension because nobody had ever shown her why it mattered at 22, not 52. The woman who had all the capability and none of the financial confidence to act on it. 

    Avoiding it feels safer. But it only protects the fear, not the future. 

    I went on to spend years in FTSE 100 finance teams, and I saw the same patterns there, just better disguised. Highly capable people managing multi-million-pound budgets who, in their own financial lives, were deferring, avoiding, and struggling, while not asking for help. They didn’t lack the intelligence, it was that the confidence, the context, and the tools had just never been there. 

    More information isn’t the answer. It’s a confidence and behaviour problem. And you can’t solve it with a financial blog or a link to a money comparison website. 

    April is the right moment to have this conversation 

    For most organisations, April means gender pay gap reporting. And while the numbers matter, they can also create a false sense of closure, as if publishing the data is the action. 

    It isn’t. The data describes the gap but it doesn’t address what’s actually driving it. 

    The women in your workforce who aren’t engaging with their pensions, aren’t using the benefits on offer, aren’t advocating for their own development, they’re not passive because they don’t care. They’re disengaged because the financial confidence that would drive that engagement was never built. Reporting the gap without doing anything about it changes nothing for the women in your building. 

    If your organisation is already looking at the numbers, this is the moment to go further. To ask not just “what does our pay gap look like?” but “what is the actual financial experience of the women who work here and what are we doing to change it?” 

    What working with me looks like 

    I am a Chartered Management Accountant and Certified Financial Coach, which means I understand both the commercial reality of what financial stress costs an organisation and the behavioural reality of why people struggle to change their relationship with money. I understand this from both sides. 

    I work with HR and People teams to deliver financial wellbeing programmes that are practical, engaging, and built around actually changing how people think and act around money, not just telling them what to do.  

    That includes: 

    • targeted workshops on financial confidence, budgeting and future planning 
    • group coaching programmes that support change over time 
    • Lunch and Learn sessions that engage without overwhelming 
    • leadership sessions to help managers confidently support financially stressed employees 

    Everything is tailored to your workforce. No jargon, no judgement, just practical support people can use immediately. 

    This isn’t another webinar people forget. It’s structured, behaviour-led support that changes how people make financial decisions over time. 

    One recent employer said: “The attendees had never really encountered money mindset before, but Debbie made the idea accessible. The session was brilliantly interactive and powerful.” 

    The results organisations typically see include higher pension participation, fewer last-minute pay requests, reduced reliance on reactive salary increases, reduced presenteeism, fewer stress-driven absences. When people feel in control of their money, a pay rise isn’t always necessary to feel secure. 

    If you are responsible for people, wellbeing or culture and are ready to do something that genuinely reaches the women in your workforce, I would love to talk. 

    You can find my listing and get in touch here: https://expertservicesdirectory.com/directory/debbie-bailey 

    A question worth raising in your next people meeting 

    If you stripped away every financial wellbeing resource your organisation currently offers and asked honestly, who is it actually designed for? Would women at every level of your organisation be included? Or are you relying on provision that works for some, and misses others entirely? 

    The organisations that get this right don’t just see better benefit engagement and stronger pension participation. They see women who feel genuinely seen and supported, and who respond with the focus, retention, and performance that comes from not carrying invisible financial weight into every working day. 

    This is costing you more than any report is showing you. It just isn’t being measured properly. The good news is it’s also one of the most straightforward things to address, when the support is designed correctly. 

    Reach me directly through my listing here: https://expertservicesdirectory.com/directory/debbie-bailey