Pension Awareness Day – Encouraging employees to save for their future

Today is Pension Awareness Day – a special day in the calendar created to make the nation aware of pensions. This presents a great opportunity for employers across the UK to spread the word to their employees on saving for retirement.

Most of us would agree that pensions might not be the most entertaining topic one can talk about, so this could potentially be the reason why people are saving so little. In fact, a recent government report highlighted that as many as 12 million people are simply not saving enough for their future.

But the question is – how to get the pension message across? There is no right answer to this but explaining any financial matter in plain English and using different methods to deliver the message is essential.

Our latest research entitled “The workplace communication challenge” revealed that 9 in 10 HR professionals face challenges when communicating benefits, which includes their pension scheme. Also, 47% of the respondents still communicate their employee benefits through a handbook, which is unengaging and gets out of date very quickly.

Traditional techniques, when it comes to communication in the workplace, do not always deliver the best outcomes. Hence a multi-channel approach is always recommended and the use of technology to get a workforce engaged is paramount. We’re all increasingly using tablets and other mobile devices to view information. Why should pensions be viewed any differently?

We have kept up with the times and added new functionality to our employee engagement and communication portal. It not only features a more modern look and feel, but it also includes a brand new financial education module. In addition to that, we have also implemented an interactive pension calculator. The tool not only makes employees aware of how much they will retire on, based on their current pension contributions, circumstances and certain assumptions, but it also encourages them to reflect on whether they should save more for a more comfortable retirement.

We will run webinars on Thursday 5th October at 11am and 2pm to demonstrate the financial education module and other functionalities of the portal. For more information and to register, please click here.

This blog has also been published on Reward.