Employee Assistance companies are reporting a significant rise in the number of calls they receive caused by the economic downturn. One reports a 15% rise in worker stress compared to the same period last year.
It is important in hard times to use all the help you can get, and to avoid the temptation of pulling in your horns and hiding at home.
Most full EAPs will offer debt counselling and financial guidance to staff - our own programme certainly does! - but you can also get support if you are, for example, stressed by the threat of redundancy, or need to know more about the legal rules around employment.
Now is a good time for managers to be reminding their staff about the programme to which their organisation subscribes. If you don't have an EAP, perhaps you should, now more than ever. Christmas is coming, with all that entails...
What follows is an extract from our latest newsletter sent to our EAP customers. We hope that you find it useful:
Managing the Costs of Christmas
Christmas can be a very expensive time, with many of us falling into debt in the pursuit of the "perfect Christmas". In the current climate it is more important than ever to ensure that you are not still paying for this Christmas when next Christmas comes along.
If you need to borrow to cover the costs of Christmas, make sure that you only borrow what you can afford to pay back. If you are already struggling with financial commitments it is not advisable to take on further debt.
If you do choose to borrow money to pay for Christmas, work out what you can realistically afford to repay. Ideally you would not want to be paying off Christmas debts more than three months after Christmas. Therefore calculate how much you can afford to pay back each month. This will give you an idea of the maximum that you should borrow. Once you know how much you can afford to borrow you can decide which method of borrowing is right for you.
It can be difficult to start thinking about saving for next Christmas when we are working out how to avoid Christmas debt this year! But the best way to reduce the financial impact of Christmas is to start putting money aside early; if you start putting a little away each month from January it can have a big impact on reducing the financial pressures of Christmas.
Use the amount that you spend this year as a guide to how much you need to save for next year and build this into your monthly budget.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
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