06/06/2011
By Ilonka Oudenampsen
Employers should apply three strategies to engage their employees with saving for a pension, said Financial Frontiers, a think-tank formed by Buck Consultants comprising HR and pension professionals, consultants and academics.
The first recommendation is to communicate like a journalist, rather than an administrator. The think-tank’s investigation showed that paper is one of the most accessible forms of communication and it is the most common form of financial education for employees.
Employees mainly make financial decisions based on information from newspapers and magazines. Financial Frontiers said that pension communication should therefore adopt journalists’ everyday language, concise articles, interesting visuals and their credible and factual reporting.
Secondly, the research showed that most employees use financial-information websites as one of the more important sources of financial information. Facebook, Twitter and text messaging are less effective, as they are too personal or too concise to provide all the necessary information, resulting in employees not using them or not taking the next step.
The third recommendation is to integrate pension information with information on insurance and other benefits, so that an employee can access all this information on an intranet page.
The study also showed that new technologies are not always better. Employees prefer being contacted by email rather than by text, and existing web technology can integrate messaging with education, peer ratings, activity levels and recommendations.
