The BBC reported that an employee contacted their EAP that offered professional support and shared that he’d been having suicidal thoughts. This is a situation that should only be tackled by a trained professional. What was he told? That he should go on a date with his wife.

The same provider was also alleged to have told its counselors to keep call times down, limit referrals to therapists and to keep conversations solutions-focused. At the time the story broke, the provider was due to be investigated by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

Inappropriate guidance: a massive barrier to impact

 This is a clear example of inappropriate guidance, which is especially terrible when it comes to financial wellbeing. Inappropriate guidance can be a dangerous thing and there is lots of it floating around on TikTok, Twitter/X and other social platforms from well-intentioned-but-misguided family and friends and from randomers down the pub. That’s not to mention the more nefarious guidance from darker, more exploitative parts of society that try to take advantage of people’s financial needs.

This is far more dangerous than is known or talked about across society. Imagine an employee who is going through a divorce, unable to talk to their employer and also drowning in debt. They see a cryptocurrency advert on social media and invest what little they have left in a desperate bid to solve their financial woes.

Ultimately, these situations should make organisations sit up and wonder where their employees are getting their financial guidance and support from. There’s a real imperative to provide them with the right guidance: professional guidance. But as we have just seen, not all professional guidance is created equal and what makes this amateurs-dressed-as-professionals guidance so dangerous is that people are primed in society to trust professionals.

So, while they may not follow the TikTok guidance, there’s a good chance they’ll trust the ‘professional’ assigned to help them. And that’s a big problem if that person is not suitably qualified.

Stigma: the second barrier to impact

 Stigma makes this whole situation more difficult. A lot of people aren’t willing to share that they’re struggling with money. That makes inappropriate guidance far more dangerous as you don’t know that people are accessing it and following it. This is especially true in today’s hybrid working world where employees could be following inappropriate guidance and getting into trouble with money and, as an employer, you would be completely blind to it.

Money stigma is a terrible thing for society and it’s very important that we tackle it – we’ve made progress on mental health stigma and it’s really opened up the conversation and left fewer people suffering in silence. One of the best ways to normalise the conversation about money is to give people professional support because these professionals have thousands of hours of experience dealing with very similar concerns.Simply knowing that many other people are going through similar situations is an effective way to tackle money stigma.

Don’t settle for anything less than true, professional support

 Professional support is the gold standard. Thousands of hours of training and experience, an ethical model and a focus on delivering the very best care for employees: these are inherent to professional solutions and you should never go with a provider that cannot demonstrate these.

The amateurs-as-professionals issue is just one of the reasons the wellbeing industry is getting a bad rap for ineffective solutions. We’ve also seen unproven technology used for interventions and a focus on the short-term where providers chase increasing employee knowledge as the end goal rather than behavioural change.

But wellbeing works when backed by true professionals and the right business model that prioritises value for the end user and organisation. This means empowerment across all levels of the business and long-term behavioural change are the endgame.