Three ways to create pension communications your employees will actually read and engage with

Getting people engaged with pensions is hard.

Talk to anyone about it and you’ll typically get one of two reactions. General indifference – eyes glaze over and the listener stares into the distance. Or, feigned interest – the listener nods and smiles. You may even get genuine interest. Although this usually means the listener already works in pensions.

Talking a lot about pensions also means you’re really fun at parties. That is, the ones you get invited to.

Ok, so you might struggle to make pensions exciting – but you should be able to get your employees interested.

After all, people do care about their finances and their future. Just think about how popular challenger banks Monzo and Revolut are.

But getting the message out there can be tricky.

Workers these days are spread all over the place. Some sit at their desks all day, others work remotely. Some are ‘field-based’ and others are not even in the country.

And no doubt they’re bombarded with information on a daily basis. The modern working day is a constant stream of ‘to-do’ lists, alerts, reminders, nudges and deadlines.

So in a noisy world, the first step is getting people to actually read what you’ve written. And step two is getting them to act.

There are lots of ways to achieve this. Here are three you can try:

1. Think about your audience – change it up

Rather than sending the same blanket message to everyone, you need to tailor your comms.

In other words, make them relevant. Think about who you’re talking to. Your average 25 year old is unlikely to care about their retirement options just yet. But understanding how to manage their money better with a smartphone app may resonate.

Make your communications relatable. Use analogies so your employees understand what you mean. Use storytelling to help them identify with their future self and how better decisions now can make a difference later on.

And whatever you do, don’t use jargon. Pension communications are often littered with financial gobbledegook. For example: "The glidepath will begin for eligible jobholders entering their decumulation phase, but members needn't worry since lifestyling will take effect. Members can select from an annuity, income drawdown and UFPLS."

If that makes sense, perhaps you're a pension expert. But it’s unlikely your employees are.

2. Break it down into bite-sized chunks

It can be hard to digest even the most run-of-the-mill pension communications. That’s why it’s important you deliver them in easily-processed chunks.

Working memory is limited – we can’t think about several things at once. Breaking a goal into smaller steps makes it mentally manageable.

Don’t try to cover too much in one message. If you try to cover legislative changes, investment options and retirement products in one email, you’ll just fuel the perception that pensions are impenetrable. Keep things simple and try to stick to one call to action.

But let the keen beans dig deeper if they want to. Signpost to helpful resources so employees can explore the nitty gritty and get the answers they need.

Get to the point as fast as you can. If you want them to put more money into their pension, or log into their account, say it.

Don’t waffle on or drift into irrelevance.

3. Make it easy for them to take action – then measure!

It’s one thing to tell people what they should do. It’s another to make it easy for them to actually do it.

Calls to action should be clear, prominent and easy to follow. If your message is to put more into your pension, then the call to action should take them to a simple online process (or form) so they can do it.

Sounds obvious, right? But many people get this wrong, and forget to tell people how to act. Multiple calls to action are ok, if they’re clear. But try to reduce friction and stick to one per message if you can.

Above all, don’t forget to measure what you’re doing. You need to know who’s reading what and when. If you can’t measure, you won’t know how engaged or unengaged your audience are – what works and what doesn’t.

Many businesses use PDFs to communicate changes. But they lack the ability to collect data about engagement. Some PDF tools might come with simple analytics features, but you won’t be able to measure specific actions like click rates or read time. Consider the tools you use and how best to collect information.

You must know how your employees interact with your content. Without analytics, you won’t be able to tailor your content to them.

So measure, measure, measure – otherwise how else will you know if your employees are engaged?

Got the message?

Finally, it’s worth mentioning you should be realistic about what pension communications can achieve. Emails, posters and letters are a great way to get simple messages across and nudge employees into action. But meeting an expert in person has proven time and time again to be one of the most effective methods of boosting engagement.

In the future, it’s likely that artificial intelligence will produce some fantastic financial services solutions – but it’ll be hard to beat a face to face human interaction, especially when it comes to talking about money.

The author is Stewart McIntosh, head of workplace marketing & engagement at Hargreaves Lansdown.

This article is provided by Hargreaves Lansdown.