Denise Neethling, Head of Marketing at Paymenow
October is Mental Health Awareness Month, and an opportunity to acknowledge the burden carried by South African workers. In the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG’s) Working Life survey, 52% of employed respondents said they had been diagnosed with a mental health condition, led by depression (32%), clinical stress (25%), anxiety (18%) and burnout (13%). SADAG estimates that presenteeism – employees at work but unable to function fully – costs the economy more than R200 billion a year in lost productivity.
Financial concerns are a common thread throughout these findings. DebtBusters’ 2025 Money-Stress Tracker found that 73% of South Africans with money stress say it affects their work life. The toll that this stress exerts can be measured in healthcare access. Discovery Health reports that one in seven members of its medical scheme was being treated for, or claiming for, a mental health condition in 2024, up from one in ten in 2012.
Employee assistance programmes are often used only once a problem has reached crisis point, but the pressure most workers describe arrives earlier and more often, prompted by a school-fee bill, a car repair or a family emergency in the week before payday.
For a growing share of workers, the pressure ends in gambling. Old Mutual’s Savings and Investment Monitor 2026 found that 53% of employed South Africans earning R8 000 or more a month gamble, and 42% do so frequently in the hope of covering living costs or paying down debt. The share who reported financial difficulty as a direct result of gambling rose to 22%, from 12% a year earlier.
By allowing control over income employees have already earned through its earned-wage access offering, financial-wellness provider Paymenow is helping alleviate this stress. More than two thirds of Paymenow customers report that their ability to save has improved since joining the platform, 80% report lower levels of debt, and 90% say they feel more in control of their finances.
“Most workplace wellness support starts once someone is already struggling,” says Denise Neethling, Head of Marketing at Paymenow. “Financial stress builds every month in the days before payday, and that is when people make costly decisions – another loan, another bet. Letting employees reach the wages they have already earned removes that pressure, and it costs the employer nothing.”
Paymenow runs a mental wellness helpline alongside its earned-wage access. Half of all cases involved financial strain, and almost a third were requests for financial coaching, mainly on debt management and consolidation. Among the cases that presented with a mental health concern, money featured in 29%, through loans, maintenance payments, loan sharks and gambling to raise cash, and in 36% of cases among men.
Stress was the most common presenting problem, but it was seldom the whole story. In 59% of mental health cases the helpline recorded two or more underlying causes, led by relationships, work pressure, family responsibilities and money. Yet fewer than 10 people used both financial coaching and counselling, which suggests most are getting help for their finances and their mental health separately. Paymenow’s gambling education module, which educates users against the hidden costs and dangers of gambling, has been completed 62 030 times in its first 38 days, split almost evenly between women and men.
“Employers already pay for mental ill-health through absenteeism, presenteeism and staff turnover,” Neethling adds. “This Mental Health Awareness Month, employers should ask themselves whether their wellness support reaches people when the pressure starts to build, or only once it has become a crisis.
ENDS
