In the past 18 months, hiring the best talent has become a real challenge.

The talent is there, but they have a huge choice of where they go to work. As a result, any company hiring at the moment needs to be competitive, appealing, and forward-thinking in their approach to looking after existing employees, and attracting new staff.

This is something Tom Katté, MD of Katté & Co, has experienced first-hand this year. Katté & Co is a leading paid search and social agency for ambitious ecommerce brands, and in the past two months they’ve hired 12 people with further plans to hire in 2022.

Tom says: “we want to be a desirable place to work at as hiring right now is very very tough. To do this we need to support our staff, not just in their jobs but in their lives too, and give them the right tools to grow.”

Why poor financial education led Katté & Co to Bippit

In a bid to help his employees, Tom identified financial wellbeing as an area for enhancement.

Tom explains: “I’ve always been passionately annoyed about financial wellbeing. Schools and universities give you no financial training whatsoever, yet it’s one of the most important things in life.”

“To combat this, I had planned to run our own internal financial training session, with tips and tricks on how to save and what staff should be doing each month.”

“By chance I came across another agency talking about Bippit and I thought it would perfectly plug our financial gap. Bippit was exactly what we needed, and was much better than me having to do the training myself!”

Beyond just this, giving staff access to Bippit was part of Katté & Co’s wider employee wellbeing experience.

“I want staff to feel well looked-after and see that we care about them beyond their day-to-day job. We want them to be happy, secure, and safe in their personal lives.”

“We use Spill (which gives our staff mental health support), and so adopting Bippit made a lot of sense as good financial health plays a role in both physical and mental wellbeing.”

“We've got a young team, with the average age around 20 to 25, and Bippit is a way for us to nurture that young talent. It’s definitely part of our staff retention strategy and our staff happiness strategy (which is really the same thing).”

The importance of expert one-to-one financial coaching

Once a company adopts Bippit, every member of their team can talk one-to-one with a qualified financial expert. Different employees are matched to different experts based on their needs (whether it’s guidance on savings, pensions, or retirement planning), all so they feel less stressed, more secure, and more settled in their job.

"Adopting Bippit made a lot of sense as good financial health plays a role in both physical and mental wellbeing.”

It’s this level of support that Tom wanted for his team.

“I love the fact that our staff get matched to a personal and trained financial coach. I think that's brilliant. To be able to actually speak openly and confidentially with a highly qualified professional really stood out to me.”

“I was also very impressed by the speed and ease of Bippit’s onboarding process. It’s been super easy and low touch for me and the senior team. We haven’t had to worry about anything.”

“We had one set-up call and within a week 73% of staff had signed up and got going on the platform. It just shows the appetite for Bippit from our team.”

Looking ahead…

As Katté & Co plans for further hiring in the coming months, Tom plans to use Bippit in conversations with potential new employees.

“Having Bippit helps us from an employee branding perspective. It’s going to help not just retention, but talent attraction. Bippit helps us stay ahead of the curve and it's very cost effective.”

Along with the likes of TERN and What3Words, Katté & Co is one of the many companies benefitting from Bippit’s all-in-one financial wellbeing platform.