21 Oct 2019

Seven ways to solve the pensions engagement conundrum

Winning peoples’ attention when they are bombarded with huge volumes of information on a daily basis is no easy task. Automatic enrolment has been hugely successful in bringing millions of people into pensions savings, largely through the power of inertia. Now we’re through phasing and staging, it’s time to start engaging members to help them understand what kind of retirement they want and how they can work towards it, so it’s vital messages cut through the noise of life.

We’ve shared below some of our top tips to get your employees interested and engaged with their pension pot:

1. Understand your engagement goal

We talk a lot about member engagement, but it’s important to focus on what the purpose of an interaction is and what you want a member to do as a result of it. You may want the employee to think differently about their pension. For example, to reinforce the message that saving is normal for someone like them. You may want them to feel differently – to start feeling ownership of their money. It may be the aim of the engagement is to get them to act, such as to activate their accounts. Whatever your goal is, it’s important to keep it in mind when designing the way you’ll reach your employees

2. Overcome behavioural biases

It’s only human nature to favour the present over the future. I’m sure many of you have heard statements like this; ‘Pension? That’s not something for me to worry about just yet’. Communications have to be balanced in order to make people realise that this is important to start thinking about, but not seem too daunting.

3. Be timely

Pensions communications should be timely for members at a given moment in life. Can key life events be used to trigger personalised messages on pensions? Milestone birthdays etc can all be times when people start reconsidering their financial situation.

4. Be compelling

Yes, we’re talking about pensions, but there are ways to make long term savings interesting for your workforce. Is responsible investment something that would get your employees interested? If so, why not draw their attention to the fact that the money in their pension fund could be invested in helping move towards a lower carbon economy in the future? Choose what motivates your staff and use that as a hook to get their attention.

5. Be focused

Employees need to feel that the communication is relevant to them to engage with it. Segmentation of your employee base could help you craft messages that are more likely to engage with them. For example, why not share information about the importance of starting to save early to younger members of your workforce, so they can see what an impact saving over many years can have?

6. Be personal

In a world where consumers now expect bespoke treatment, communications about pensions need to be personalised. A blanket approach won’t achieve cut through and will likely end up in the deleted mailbox.

7. Clarity of language

In the past, pensions communications have often used a lot of jargon and complex language. When putting together your pension comms, try and write in plain English as much as possible to make your comms accessible.

This article is provided by NEST.