Today, we’re publishing results from a survey we named “Zuberi Technologies Employee Financial Wellness Survey” which we ran in May 2021 amongst our network of potential customers.

This survey had 200 salaried employees in Ghana responses as we asked them about their understanding of financial wellness With 68.20% (Male) and 31.80% (Female) which is not surprising, considering the formal sector in Ghana is a male-dominated one.

See below the responses:

What does Financial Wellness mean to you?

This question was aimed at accessing the meaning of financial wellness to the respondents. 33.3% of the respondents said financial wellness means having the financial freedom to make choices to enjoy life. 27% believed financial wellness means having enough savings that they are not worried about unexpected expenses. In fact, 20% concluded financial wellness meant being able to meet day-to-day or monthly expenses. Also, 11.10% of the respondents were confident financial wellness meant being debt-free. Interestingly 4.4% had no idea what financial wellness meant.

We did expect varied responses to this question. Considering the responses like being debt-free, having money to meet day-to-day expenses, and having enough savings meant employees in Ghana are financially stressed or leaving paycheck to paycheck.

We sought to dig deeper with the subsequent questions. Nesting components

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What causes you the most stress?

Well, we saw this coming actually. More than half (60%) of the respondents disclosed financial or money matters causes them the most stress However, 17.80% and 11.10% of the respondents confessed their Job and Relationship causes them the most stress respectively. According to The Pan-Africa Productivity Association, a financially stressed employee will spend, on average, 20 hours a month dealing with financial issues at work. This means that an employee could be spending up to an estimated 27 working days a year dealing with their financial issues when they could be spending this time focusing on their work.

What are your top financial concerns?

Not having enough emergency savings for unexpected expenses (62.20%) was their topmost financial concern. Again 20% of the respondents feel not being able to meet monthly expenses was their financial concern.

To help reduce this concern, Zuberi Stream allows employees to stream a percentage of their earned salaries into their momo money wallets before their employer’s payday. This is provided by employers to their staff as an employee benefit and to reduce workplace stress. It is NOT a loan, as you are only accessing the salaries that you have already worked for.

How much do you have currently in savings or investments?

Sadly 24.40% of the respondents do not have any savings or investments with 33.40% having savings of GH¢3,000 or less. In the coming months, as employee financial wellness is our topmost priority we will be rolling out savings and investment features on our mobile app.

How many dependents do you have?

It is worth noting that almost half (47.70%) have 3–5 dependents they take care of. And it is not surprising that they are financially stressed.

What employer benefit would you most like to see added in the future (if you do not already have it)?

The responses to this question were quite interesting. First off, 33.30% highlighted Financial wellness training would be the employer benefit they would like to see added in the future. Here at Zuberi, we have also added this to our mandate. We will be educating employees on our platform on improving their financial well-being.

Interestingly, 31.30% of the respondents expressed interest in having access to earned salary as and when they need it. This is clearly in line with Zuberi’s primary mission of making earned salaries available to employees.

"It's going to be odd in a few years' time if an African worker cannot go to work today and access their money on the same day” — Julian Owusu CEO of Zuberi Technologies

That’s it for our first survey update in 2021— please let us know your thoughts or feedback in the comments via Hello@zuberipay.com — If you’re interested in understanding more about how we monitor data, stay tuned for more blogs!

If you’re keen to redefine how salary payments work in Africa, want to shape the direction of a modern data team, and push the status quo of what’s currently possible, please get in touch. We’ll be growing our data team at Zuberi.

If you’re interested in future roles please contact Mawuli@zuberipay.com 😎