Debt a rising problem on the work floor

9 June 2006

AMSTERDAM – Money problems experienced by Dutch employees are increasingly a problem on the work floor, research organization Nibud said on Friday.

The Dutch research organisation, which offers advice on budgeting, recently concluded a survey of 300 personnel officers. More than 70 per cent of them had seen the number of employees with financial problems rising during the last two years. Some 64 per cent of the personnel officers had seen a rise in the number of attachments on earnings in the same period.

Nibud said that the employees’ money problems often became visible for the first time because of attachments on their earnings. Companies are legally obliged to cooperate with such attachments, during which a proportion of the money earned by an employee can be seized to pay a debt.

Attachments on earnings mean more than extra work for the salary administration departments of companies, Nibud said. Employees with debts were also potentially a risk to the companies they worked for, the organisation said.

‘An employee with money problems is vulnerable to fraud and theft,’ the organization said. ‘They also open to blackmail. And they also often suffer from stress or sleep problems, which can lead to them being off sick.’

More than half of employers try to help employees by giving them advances on their holiday pay. Around three out of five employers referred employees with money problems to organisations that help people in financial trouble. Three out of ten gave the employees a loan.

The larger the company, the more likely employees were to be referred to another organisation to seek help. Smaller employers (fewer tan 200 employees) tended to offer loans. Most personnel officers (around 85 per cent) only took action when confronted with employees’ money problems – usually when claims were made on their salaries.
Some personnel officers took preventative measures to help employees evade claims on their salaries. They did this by paying fixed costs directly out of the employees’ salaries, for instance, or by making deals with their debtors to pay off the money owed and providing information on dealing with money.

Subject: Dutch News