Much of the conversation around workplace savings focuses on products and processes.

How can employers make saving easier?

How can payroll saving be implemented?

How can participation rates be increased?

These are important questions, but they risk overlooking something more fundamental.

Many employees simply don’t believe they can afford to save.

After several years of cost-of-living pressures, rising housing costs and higher household bills, millions of workers have become accustomed to living month-to-month.

Even where there is a desire to save, immediate financial demands tend to win out.

This helps explain why low savings levels persist, despite widespread awareness of the importance of having an emergency fund.

The challenge is not always a lack of motivation.

Often, it’s a lack of confidence, knowledge and financial headspace.

This is where financial wellbeing becomes critical.

Employees who understand their finances are generally better placed to make informed decisions about spending, budgeting, borrowing and saving.

They are more likely to spot opportunities to put money aside and more likely to feel confident taking that first step.

Many employers have already introduced workplace savings accounts, payroll-linked savings schemes and other tools designed to encourage saving.

Yet participation can still fall short of expectations, particularly among employees who would benefit most from building a financial buffer.

That’s because saving behaviour doesn’t start with a product.

It starts with understanding.

Employees who are worried about debt, struggling to balance competing financial priorities or lacking confidence in managing their money are unlikely to engage with a savings scheme simply because one is available.

Financial education helps address the root causes that prevent people from saving in the first place.

The success of automatic enrolment demonstrated the powerful influence employers can have on financial behaviours.

However, emergency savings present a different challenge.

Pension saving is largely focused on long-term outcomes.

Emergency savings require employees to make decisions that affect their finances today.

That can feel considerably harder when budgets are already stretched.

This is why behavioural change will be just as important as product innovation.

Employees need support to build positive financial habits, understand the value of even small savings contributions and recognise that financial resilience is built gradually, not all at once.

The coalition itself recognises that increasing participation will be just as important as increasing access.

Its goals include not only encouraging more employers to offer workplace savings schemes, but also driving up employee participation rates and increasing the number of workers with meaningful emergency savings.

The National Coalition for Workplace Savings provides employers with an opportunity to rethink how they approach financial wellbeing.

For many years, workplace financial wellbeing strategies have focused heavily on pensions and retirement outcomes.

While these remain important, recent economic challenges have exposed a different issue: many employees are trying to save for the future while lacking any meaningful buffer for today.

This resilience gap has significant implications for both employees and employers.

Research cited by the coalition’s founding partners shows that workplace savings can improve financial resilience and wellbeing, while also supporting productivity and reducing financial stress among employees.

But workplace savings schemes are likely to be most effective when delivered as part of a broader financial wellbeing strategy that includes education, guidance and support.

The National Coalition for Workplace Savings has the potential to drive meaningful change.

Its founding members already represent more than 350,000 employees, and there is strong momentum behind its ambition to expand workplace savings across the UK.

However, its success will not be measured by the number of employers offering workplace savings schemes.

It will be measured by whether employees actually build meaningful financial buffers.

Achieving that outcome requires more than providing access to a savings account.

It requires helping employees develop the confidence, understanding and financial habits that make saving possible.

For employers, that means treating workplace savings and financial wellbeing as two sides of the same coin.

Because before employees can build financial resilience, they first need the confidence to believe saving is within their reach.