Global technology organisation Siemens, which employs approximately 7,000 employes in the UK, believes it is important for its younger employees to understand that pension saving is most effective when they start early on. This gives them more time to build up contributions and investment returns, and make the most of the employer contributions on offer.
The organisation’s main pension scheme is the Siemens Benefit Scheme (SBS), which is a trust-based arrangement with a legacy defined benefit (DB) section and a defined contribution (DC) section open to new joiners.
The main way it communicates with its members is through the trustee’s website, My Pension, which holds all information about the scheme, including news articles, information on the SBS trustee and detailed investment pages.
The organisation ensures that its younger employees are engaged with and informed about their pensions through a variety of methods, explains Jo Udall, senior pensions manager at Siemens UK.
“Pensions is a big part of our benefits package; we put plenty of signposting on our intranet to help employees find the information they need and we include pensions [on] our total reward statements,” she says. “We also use our internal social platform Yammer to promote pension messages within Siemens.”
The majority of scheme members are happy to communicate and receive communications about their pension online, either through the websites or via email, but those who are not, have the option to opt out of electronic communications and receive information by post instead, explains Udall.
“When we run a particular pension communication exercise, such as encouraging members to review their contribution levels, we segment our population and make sure members receive the most appropriate messages for their particular circumstances,” she says.
Siemens’ scheme administrator, Trafalgar House, also operates a website called My Work Pension that employees can log into to view their pension record, update details and amend choices. It also uses My Work Pension as a secure way of sending members communications, such as the trustee’s annual newsletter outlook and benefit statements.