The creative comms you haven't thought of yet to increase pensions engagement

Stop designing pensions communication around your scheme and start designing it around your people, says Ciphr Benefits’ Gina Neale.

Annual pension statements arrive and go unopened. Contribution levels sit where auto-enrolment set them. And every year, another campaign built around "log in and check your pension" falls on deaf ears.

Penfold's 2026 Retirement Reality Check found 58% didn't know what their pension pot is currently worth, even though 90% said their workplace pension influences whether they stay in a job.

The problem isn't apathy. Pensions communication is written for people who already understand pensions. Everyone else gets a document about a scheme rather than a message about their money.

Here are six creative ways to change that.

1. Give pensions their own look

Instead of an email headed "Pension Scheme Update," consider giving your communications a distinct campaign name and visual identity, something closer to a consumer brand than an HR notice and far more likely to be opened. Think Cycle to Work. Nobody calls it the cycle-to-work salary sacrifice arrangement.

Defence organisation AWE, working with provider nudge, ran a week-long campaign around the pension industry's "Pay Your Pension Some Attention" theme, using storytelling and personalised nudges rather than scheme documents. Afterwards, 75% of employees said their pension confidence had increased and 70% reported taking action.

But a campaign will only get an email or a notice opened. What gets it read is content written for someone specific. A 24-year-old on the default rate and a 58-year-old weighing up retirement need different messages about the same scheme.

2. Work backwards from the retirement people want

Most pension tools start with a contribution rate and produce a projection. It's worth asking your provider whether they can run it the other way round.

If someone can choose the retirement they actually want and see the monthly figure that gets them there, the decision becomes something they can weigh against their own budget. It helps to talk in pounds rather than percentages too. DWP's Lessons on Pensions Engagement research picks that out as one of the specific, manageable changes employers can make.

3. Put pensions on video

A short series does more than any document: how your scheme works, what your employer puts in, what to do with old pension pots from previous jobs.

Take tax relief. PensionBee found in March 2026 that 88% of UK adults don't know the rate they receive, and almost a third don't know contributions attract tax relief at all. Show what a 1% increase actually costs per month once tax relief has done its work, and what it's worth by retirement. The cost is usually smaller than people expect. The difference by retirement usually isn't.

4. Leverage the payslip

Most pensions booklets go unread. But everybody reads their payslip, where the pension usually appears as a single deduction with no context. Ask payroll whether it can display the employer contribution alongside the employee's own.

Total reward statements take the idea further, setting the pension next to salary, bonus and every other benefit. The payslip gives you reach every month; the statement gives the whole picture once a year.

5. Equip line managers

Employees often take pension questions to their line manager rather than HR, and most managers have nothing to work from.

Give them a one-page answer sheet covering the five questions that come up most, plus a clear line on what they shouldn't attempt to answer and where to send people instead. Add a prompt to the pay review conversation too, because a pay rise is the best moment there is to raise contributions.

Most employers already offer something: an EAP, a financial wellbeing app, an adviser benefit. But employees rarely know it exists at the moment they need it.

6. Ask what your pensions provider can now offer

Under the FCA's targeted support regime, live since 6 April 2026, pension firms can make specific suggestions to groups of members who share the same circumstances, without assessing each person individually. Until recently that would have counted as regulated advice.

So, there's a new question worth asking: has your provider applied for the permission, and what can they now tell your members that they couldn't last year?

Pensions communication is continuous

The moments when people think about their pension are scattered throughout the year and different for everyone: a pay rise, a promotion, a return from parental leave, a significant birthday. A campaign creates attention. Continuity is what keeps it.

That matters more now the Pension Schemes Act 2026 is raising the bar on retirement outcomes. Employers will need to show their scheme is working, and the ones who can will be those who stopped writing about pensions and started communicating about people's money.