Workshops can help employees make the numbers add up

Multiply, commissioned and managed by Warwickshire County Council and part of the UK Government Skills for Life project, supports people with basic maths skills to enhance their everyday living. Kate Henderson, Multiply Budgeting Advisor at Coventry & Warwickshire CDA, one of the deliverers of the scheme, explains more.

Would you like to help your employees who are struggling with the cost of living?

If you are an employer who would like us to come and deliver a workshop for your staff to help them budget and access more support if required, please contact us so that we can discuss further. All our workshops are free and delivered by a small team of professional budgeting advisors. The workshops benefit both employers and employees by supporting employee wellbeing and offering practical tips to manage regular expenses & stay in control of personal finances.

So why would you, as an employer, provide a cost-of-living workshop to your employees?

It’s well known that money and mental health are connected. There are numerous advantages in providing cost-of-living workshops to your employees:

· They demonstrate your understanding of how your employees are presently coping with the cost of living

· Improving your employee’s numeracy confidence can help improve the quality of your workforce and encourage better productivity.

· They can be incorporated into your employee development and training programmes, motivating your employees to pursue different forms of training in the workplace.

· The workshops are conveniently hosted at your own premises

· Participants receive a certificate of completion and a shopping voucher of £25 upon completing the workshop (subject to eligibility – see below)

· Your company will be featured in project newsletters and on social media

Our workshops are a great opportunity for anyone who is either worried about the cost of living or needs some extra support and signposting. We also offer an extra one-to-one meeting after for anyone who needs more help than the workshops alone can provide.

Feedback so far is that the workshops have been really helpful and informative with a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. We are funded to deliver until 2025.

If you are a business where you have a group of people or employees who would benefit from the free workshops, please call Gemma on 07985433022 or email on g.ferati@cwcda.co.uk to discuss bookings for 2024. With news this week of the UK going into another recession, these workshops are more valuable than ever. We are booking up quickly but still want to reach as many people as we can.

The workshop is a half-day (3-4 hour) one off delivery that can be booked in around your staff schedule. All we require is a room to deliver and the employees to deliver to.

The workshop covers the following:

· How to lower your energy bills and find extra support with utilities and phone contracts.

· Healthy eating on a budget and where to find food support in your area. Accessing community larders and learning how to cut down food waste alongside making the most of what you have.

· Budgeting and putting together all the tips and tricks learned to build a working spending and saving plan

We run the workshops across Warwickshire and the entry criteria is that the attendee must be 18+ live in Warwickshire and have a L2 or lower qualification in Maths to be eligible for the voucher.

To find out more, please go to our website www.cwcda.co.uk To receive our monthly project newsletter, please sign up on that website.

* Multiply – Money, Money, Maths is one of several projects in Warwickshire under the Multiply banner and is specifically aimed at supporting people to use maths in their everyday lives without fear. This is achieved by making the workshops easy to access and relevant to today’s cost of living crisis.