What we discovered... it's time to change
According to the DWP report Maintaining the Momentum1, automatic enrolment is a policy that is working and has successfully opened up pension saving for millions of employees in the workplace.
It is estimated that around 10 million people will be newly saving or saving more by the end of 2018.
This is fantastic news.
84% of respondents said for them, pensions are an important part of workplace benefits2
However, there is a ‘but’ (there’s always a ‘but’): the DWP report also highlights two strategic problems for the future development of auto enrolment across the workplace.
Problem: Current saving levels present a substantial risk that the retirement expectations for a significant proportion of the working-age population will not be supported.
Problem: While more individuals than ever before are saving, they are neither necessarily engaged with saving nor looking to take greater personal responsibility to plan and save more, for their retirement.
Nothing new here as these are well known challenges. You might think, though, that some good old fashioned scare tactics would encourage people to rethink their savings approach? You’d be wrong as they don’t.
62% of respondents said they would not react to scare tactics
So it seems that many people are simply switching off when it comes to saving for their retirement.
We decided to see if we could find out what UK employees aged between 16 to over 65 think about workplace pensions, benefits and communications. We studied their attitudes, beliefs and approach to borrowing, spending and saving money, and what they expect from their employer regarding support and communication.
We wanted to dig deep and understand why people save and spend the way they do, what’s holding them back when it comes to saving for their pension. And how employers could use communications to change their pension behaviour for the better.
We appreciate that no one size fits all, and that there is no such thing as a Comms silver bullet!
However, we’re excited to share these insights with you, and we hope that it can help you start the process of optimising your pension communications for the better.
Johanna Nelson Associate Director, Communications Punter Southall Aspire johanna.nelson@psaspire.com
1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/automatic-enrolment-review-2017-maintaining-the-momentum
2 Unless otherwise stated source is Punter Southall Aspire research report “It’s Time to Change”.