"What's important to us is that an employee gets insight into his financial situation"

APG and Vattenfall have signed a contract under which the energy company can use Geldvinder for three years. Thanks to the digital platform, the 2400 employees of Vattenfall Netherlands can get started with their personal financial goals for now and in the future. Gertjan Meijer (HR Services Vattenfall) and Richard Coonen (COO Geldvinder) tell about the value of Geldvinder.

The goal of Geldvinder is that employees can work on their financial fitness in an accessible and proactive way. This means that they get insight into and control over their finances.  According to Meijer, this fits in nicely with the other tools that Vattenfall offers its employees. "We have a package of five products that allow our employees to work on their financial fitness. For example, there is the personnel fund, which can offer a loan to an employee in special cases. In addition, in collaboration with Nibud, we publish a newspaper about financial issues. For financial insights, an employee can already talk to an advisor of EBC Netherlands and for pension questions he or she can contact ABP. And as a final addition, there is now Geldvinder. That has been used for the past two years by our youth organization Megawatt. Partly thanks to their positive reactions, we decided to offer Geldvinder to our entire organization. The participants think it is a nice addition to our existing package and are pleased with the user-friendliness and convenience of the tool."

Vattenfall pays a considerable amount of attention to the financial situation of its employees. Is there a specific reason for this?
"No, but as an employer we think it is important to take good care of our employees. Part of this is to make financial problems a topic which can be discussed openly. In addition, as an energy company, we have to deal with customers who, for example, have difficulty paying their bills. We are in discussion with Nibud and municipalities, among others, about how we can prevent debt problems or notice them in time so that we can help. That contact with those customers also plays a role in the attention we have for financial fitness as an organization."

What purpose does Vattenfall has with Geldvinder?
"When people have financial problems, this can lead to sick leave or they might no longer function optimally. It is therefore important to make it a topic which can be discussed and to support employees in this as much as possible. We see Geldvinder primarily as a tool with which employees gain insight into their financial situation. For example, what their expenses are, and what is needed to save for certain purposes, such as a house, children or a wedding. That was still missing in the other products we offer. Momentarily, Geldvinder supports our people mainly digitally. In the long run, it will also be possible to accompany the digital support with actual conversations, but we do not yet know whether that adds anything to what we already offer."

An employer can do quite a lot to point out to his employees the importance of financial fitness.  But isn't it ultimately the responsibility of the employee himself?
"In the end, it is indeed. But as an employer you can act as a facilitator and we do that in this way. As Vattenfall, for example, we also pay a lot of attention to vitality. For example, employees can have a preventive health examination carried out or undertake activities aimed at fitness with a discount. Safety is also important in our company. You have to realize that not everyone has an office function at Vattenfall, there are also colleagues working in the power plants and at the wind farms. That work has risks that we handle carefully. As an employer, we continuously listen to our employees to find out what their needs are. Just like we do with customers. And it doesn't stop at the financial fitness or health of our employees. We for instance also promote what we call sustainable employability by offering our employees the opportunity to grow in our company."

Through Geldvinder, Vattenfall can keep an eye on the financial fitness of its employees. Are there no privacy concerns?
"It's anonymous.  And that's a good thing, because we don't want that information to come to us via Geldvinder. We have other ways to do this, such as a conversation between an employee and a manager. At Geldvinder, it's really about an employee gaining insight into his or her financial situation. With inflation making many products more expensive, Geldvinder can also help them with ways to save money. That is more important to us as an employer than that certain scores roll out and we do something with them."