How to design pension communications to engage younger workers

A pension is the employee benefit that workforces value the most, according to the results of a survey carried out by benefits consultancy Punter Southall Aspire with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) between December 2022 and January 2023. Some 900 of the 1,700 HR professionals who responded to the research said this was the case. This suggests that long-term thinking about their future is an important aspect of working life for employees, so employers should look to engage younger workers with pensions sooner rather than later to ensure they are building an adequate retirement income.

Employers may find that it does not matter what they include in pension communications, because if it is not engaging then employees will not pay attention to it. To combat this, as a starting point, it might be worth asking staff to think about what their older selves would say to their current selves about their financial situation.

Mark Bingham, Partner at Secondsight, gives his thoughts on how employers can engage a younger workforce with their pensions and how employers may want to consider helping employees take their finances seriously as a whole before talking about pensions.

Employers should consider showing younger workers the impact of starting to save at a young age, says Mark Bingham, partner at Secondsight. “They should not just try to engage young employees in particular with their pensions, but engage them with the idea of not overspending and saving for their future, for instance for a house or a family, as this is more likely to lead to them thinking about saving for their pensions,” he says. “Employers may want to consider helping younger staff to take their finances as a whole seriously before starting to talk about their pensions, as they are unlikely to know how much they’ll need to save for their retirement when first entering the workplace.”

To read the full employee benefits article, click here.