It’s been hard to watch this summer’s sport without hearing discussions about preparation, fine margins and the pursuit of tiny performance gains.
Whether it was Spain’s success on football’s biggest stage, Tadej Pogačar’s latest Tour de France triumph or Josh Kerr’s successful pursuit of the world mile record, the narrative was often the same. Success wasn’t built on one moment of brilliance but instead was the product of focusing on the details and the accumulation of countless small advantages.
The principle became famous through Sir Dave Brailsford’s theory of marginal gains during British Cycling’s golden era. Improve every element of performance by just one percent and, over time, the cumulative effect can be extraordinary.
As organisations search for new ways to improve productivity, performance and growth, that same lesson is becoming increasingly relevant in the workplace. While many businesses are investing heavily in technology and AI, another powerful performance lever is often overlooked: financial wellbeing.
According to Gethin Nadin, Chief Advisory Officer at Zellis, helping employees feel more secure financially isn’t simply about doing the right thing. It’s about unlocking performance.
The hidden drag on performance
Money remains one of the biggest causes of stress in people’s lives. It affects sleep, relationships, mental health and overall wellbeing. Unsurprisingly, those pressures don’t disappear when employees start their working day.
“If you’re worried about money, you’re not as good at your job,” says Gethin. “You don’t deliver the best customer service, you’re not as productive, you’re not as good a manager.” He argues the evidence is now compelling enough to show that financial stress has a direct impact on workplace performance.
The consequences go beyond the individual. Financial stress contributes to absenteeism, presenteeism and reduced concentration, while also affecting colleagues and teams.
“When you have a manager or a key person in your team who isn’t performing as well because they’re dealing with something outside work, that affects the whole team as well,” he explains. “It becomes a bit insidious and filters through teams and the workforce quite quickly.”
Why marginal gains matter
The sports analogy resonates because workplace performance rarely improves through one major intervention. Like elite athletes, organisations often achieve the best results through a series of smaller gains.
“The reason why the sports analogy works really well is because success is marginal,” says Gethin. “You make these small tweaks that build over time.”
The same principle applies to financial wellbeing. Many UK employees have little or no emergency savings, leaving them vulnerable when unexpected costs arise.
“We’re not trying to take somebody from having no money to being a millionaire,” says Gethin. “We’re just trying to have them have a little bit more than they’ve got now.
“Even modest improvements can make a meaningful difference. If most people do not have £500 of savings, then getting somebody to £250 is a far better buffer than having nothing at all. That buffer gives people confidence.”
Reducing financial stress, even slightly, can help employees focus, perform and collaborate more effectively. Across a workforce, those gains can quickly add up.
Speaking the language of the boardroom
For years, wellbeing was often framed as an employee engagement issue. Today, the conversation is increasingly centred on performance.
“The reason why we link it to performance is because you’re linking it to a metric that the C-suite and the CEO cares about,” says Gethin. “Boards aren’t interested in people feeling a little bit better about work. They are interested in performance and growth.”
That matters because many organisations are investing heavily in technology to improve productivity.
“Most businesses are investing millions to get productivity uplift,” he says. “What we’re saying is there’s something else here that’s not costing anywhere near that, but is achieving generally the same kind of productivity uplifts.”
Financial wellbeing is therefore no longer just a wellbeing conversation. Increasingly, it is a business performance conversation.
Small changes, significant results
Like any successful performance strategy, financial wellbeing is built on consistency rather than quick fixes.
“We’re not going to solve people’s financial struggles overnight,” says Gethin. “But if we give them a bit more confidence, if we make them feel a little bit more secure, and you compound that over time, that’s where you get these incremental increases in performance.”
The lesson from sport is clear. Winning teams, world champions and record breakers understand that success is built through small improvements that accumulate over time.
For organisations focused on growth, productivity and unlocking human potential, financial wellbeing may be one of the most overlooked marginal gains available. And just as we’ve seen throughout this summer’s sporting successes, enough marginal gains, applied consistently, can become the difference between competing and winning.
Interested in hearing more from Gethin about the performance connection between sport and the workplace?
Join our Financial Wellbeing Advantage webinar series to explore the latest research, practical strategies and expert insights into workforce financial wellbeing.
