Why saving is a key part of SUEZ’s financial wellbeing strategy
SUEZ is a recycling and waste management organisation with a large number of lower-paid manual workers. The aim of our financial wellbeing strategy is to help people with their everyday costs.
In 2019 we began working with credit union Transave UK to encourage employees to save. It’s an employer-run credit union where employees agree to have a minimum of £5 deducted from their net salary each month to go into a savings account.
The scheme also offers other benefits when employees join (and save), including: £1,250 death benefit to help with funeral costs, loans paid off when the employee dies, competitive interest rates and affordable loans.
It’s really great and suits our manual workforce well. However, it doesn’t get a huge take-up.
Opt-out savings
To address this, we’ve also been working with Nest to trial ‘opt-out’ savings. From 1st November 2021, new joiners have been automatically enrolled into the saving scheme unless they ‘opt out’. The employee consent is dealt with throughout the onboarding procedure. To encourage employees to save, we’ve been automatically enrolling new starters – much like pensions – into our savings scheme at a default rate of £40 a month.
They can opt out; they get four reminders and if they haven’t opted-out by that point they become a saver.
We chose £40 because our early access to earned wage data showed that the average drawdown was £44.50, so £40 felt about right. Since we introduced the scheme, about 50% of our new starters have stayed in and remain saving. And those who are automatically enrolled into our savings scheme – rather than those who opt in by choice – save about four or five times more.
It shows that by doing all the work for them, registering them and removing the obstacle of signing up themselves, more of our manual workforce is saving and they’re saving more than those who choose to sign up themselves.
It’s been real success, and shows the power of inertia, while at the same time enabling people to have access to a rainy day fund which is their own money, rather than having to access their wages early or take out a loan.
