Christine:  So I suppose the first question really, Seamus, is what are an employer's legal obligations in relation to providing additional financial support?

Seamus:  Well, the easy answer to that is they're few and far between. The employment relationship is regulated on a contractual basis, and then we have our statutory requirements for employment, so things like our minimum wage or if we're paying the cost of living wage, if we are looking at pension contributions, and things like that, all those sort of statutory matters that are set out in law that an employer has to do.

But outside of that, yes, there are things in relation to health and safety and welfare that an employer has to look at and consider in the workplace. But when it comes to what assistance an employer has to give to an employee who may be financially stretched or facing financial hardship, there are no regulations or statutory and provisions in place that require an employer to do anything like that.

There's a CIPD article that we had looked at, Christine, and there was a survey that PWC had done that CIPD reported on. And they had said that 83% of large employers were intending to take steps to provide financial support to their employees.

And it's just that aspect that I always think about in relation to large employers. We don't, in Northern Ireland, have as many large employers as they do in England or Wales or Scotland or in the south, in the Republic of Ireland. We don't have a lot of those substantial, significant employers. Yes, we have some of them, but we don't have as many.

And a lot of the economy in Northern Ireland is through family-owned and -run businesses. They're small enterprises. Yes, there are larger ones, but you imagine the capabilities and the ability for the employers, maybe the vast majority of employers in North Ireland, mightn't be as significant as what it is elsewhere.

So that concerns me slightly, that you have 83% that are of large employers, but we mightn't have those here.

The types of things that have been discussed and talked about are very similar to what we had in our poll, the likes of pay rises, bonuses, one-off payments, vouchers, and this idea of shopping discounts for some of the supermarkets that they could provide to their staff, hardship funds where the employee is making a direct approach to the employer and saying, "I'm in difficulties. Can you give me some assistance, and can we come to some sort of agreement in relation to that?"

The other things are looking at saver clubs within businesses where an employer deducts a certain amount from salaries, or that is nominated by the employee, and it's saved by the employer. It's maybe placed in a higher interest-bearing account and there are some benefits there to that.

And then it's moving through to those other aspects of having financial wellbeing programmes in work, maybe where you have the ability for your staff or your employees to speak to a financial advisor, somebody that can come in and give advice.

And really then down to looking at flexible working, and the actual contractual matters that you could make maybe temporary adjustments to, to assist an employee. So maybe flexible working, maybe a change in their working patterns. If they are having difficulties with childcare costs, maybe look at alternative shift so that they can manage childcare in a better way and maybe more efficiently.

And those sorts of schemes in relation to making sure that the employee is getting the benefit of any schemes that are in place, government schemes in relation to tax savings, and those sorts of things.

Maybe this aspect of a financial review being done either internally or by a third party to make sure that employees are getting the most benefit out of their salary that they can.

And I know that there are some employers, these larger employers, that are giving assistance in relation to looking even at home insulation programmes and adjustments that could be made to home in terms of saving for light and heat and things like that.

But the bottom line is, ultimately, that is a stretch for employers. There's no legal obligation on the employer to take those steps. But we are in the zone at the minute of certainly an employer is feeling morally obligated, and also just from a position of protecting the business. It is this fear that the employee is going to come and say, "I can get a better deal somewhere else. I can do less work and I can get paid more", or, "I can do the same job at another company, but they're going to pay me £5,000 or £10,000 more for doing it".

And it's that fear for employers in terms of the very real impact of maybe staff shortages, recruitment costs, training costs, time, all those sorts of things. You can really just see it all has the potential of hitting the very difficult aspect.

Certainly, what I'm hearing from my clients is that there is certainly more of this position of employees making the approach to employers and saying, "What are you going to do for me?" And I think that comes from a genuine place of employees are concerned. They are noticing the fact that if they look at it overall, there's been a decrease in salary because costs have risen so highly for everything else.

So I think employers are definitely going to be feeling the pressure to do something, and it's the balance of getting that right. I suppose it's back to that point of maybe people that have moved earlier in the year to provide pay rises, but inflation has moved and the costs have moved so broadly that maybe they're going to come back and have to dig a little deeper into their pockets.

But legally, the difficulty is that you have this aspect that there's nothing in regulations or in law that that will force the employer to do that. This has to come from a place of the employer seeing the bigger picture, I think, and thinking about retention of staff.

It could also look for an employer to say, "Well, look, if I have to increase my salary aspect, what I want to do instead is look to maybe reduce numbers and look at redundancies, look at more efficient working", things like that as well. So you can see it could all get very tricky and difficult.

Some of the other sort of smaller things that I think employers could do in terms of helping employees would be you can look at this idea of an advance in salary. I suppose that there's this risk that a lot of employees could be . . . It's those classic adverts that you see on the TV about the payday loans. They're paying high interest. They're getting into more debt.

If there was a facility for the employee to come to the employer to say, "Look, could I get an advance in my pay?" or, "Could I get a company loan?" those sorts of things maybe could be looked at.

But maybe also just some open and frank discussions in the workplace around debt management and about, ultimately, if there is a real squeeze, you could end up with highs absentee periods, where people just can't come to work because there's stress, anxiety, and sickness arising because of financial situations.

So it's looking at all those and maybe debt counselling services. It's a tricky discussion to have, I think, with employees because some employees are very proud and don't want to have those discussions or don't feel that it's a discussion to have in the workplace. So it's really just letting employees know, I think, and letting staff know that there are options and help available for them, if they wish to take account of it.

Christine:  Yeah. So really, Seamus, there are no particular legal obligations around assistance, but you have to look at the bigger picture if you're going to retain staff in what is a very competitive market at the minute. You need to be taking some steps.

I'll come back COVID time and time again, because I do think that it has had a massive impact. We did become closer to colleagues during COVID. We saw into their lives more. And now I think there's almost an expectation that employers will assist, when I think even a couple of years ago it wouldn't have even been contemplated.

I think friends of mine have had employees coming and saying, "I'm caring for a family member now. I need a pay rise to assist with that". It starts to pull at heartstrings, I suppose, and you start to feel like there are obligations when there actually isn't a legal obligation.

But the staff retention, you're getting people, as you were saying, clients sitting with people with job offers on one hand and saying, "I want to stay with you, so give me a pay rise". You have to balance, "Can I afford to recruit? Can I afford to train with throwing the extra money to somebody?" So it's a tricky one and I don't envy people that are dealing with it.

Seamus:  No. And this comes off the back, I suppose, of COVID as well and the criticisms of younger employees who are quietly quitting, as I was reading about during the week, and those challenges as well. And it's a bit of a melting pot at the minute. But we hope that it will settle at some point. Hopefully it's just about getting through the next chunk of time here, maybe into the spring again.