Technology leader uses communications hub to relay benefits information and sees 94% employee enrollment

What they needed

As over 90% of their employees invest in their default pension fund, Samsung felt they needed to increase the company’s financial education activities. They wanted to be able to offer them share information from their annual Pension Governance meeting, increase awareness on the Pension freedoms, and encourage younger employees to start to think about saving for their future.

Samsung operates a Group Personal Pension Plan and doesn’t have a legal obligation to do the above but knew it would prove to be important for their employees. As an example of best practice, they formed a Pension Governance Committee in 2012.

The challenges identified with increasing financial awareness for employees included putting financial education at the top of the employee agenda, having a younger workforce who showed a lack of understanding and engagement with pensions, engaging employees with the benefits and importance of saving for their future, and that the overall feeling that talking about pensions is a topic that lacks excitement.

How we helped

To build their strategy, Samsung carried out research on non-joiners to the pension scheme to identify trends and benchmarked their pension contributions against the rest of the market. Based on the findings, they decided to hold Pensions Month in October 2014 which would target particular sectors of the business with information that was more relevant to them.

Samsung put in place four key aims for their strategy. Enhancing their communications to showcase their technology to their own employees, maintain cost effectiveness, improve their pension offering for a diverse workforce, and empower employees to take control of their future.

Examples were given to employees of the things that they do now, and how they will be unable to continue doing them unless they started saving for the future. This encouraged employees to think of the pension contributions as less of a sacrifice and more about the enhancement of their lives once they retired.

A detailed communications agenda was put in place to send out messages to that effect. Samsung used their technological know how to introduce a Blippar campaign. It would allow employees to use augmented reality to access exclusive content when ‘blipping’ the trigger with the smartphones on various communications – something that really resonated with their younger workforce. Five different posters with Blippar triggers were placed in all toilets and coffee areas, and table talkers with Blippar triggers were placed in the restaurant and coffee areas.

What they achieved

Samsung kept up their clever communications that month with 23 pension facts in video and text formats emailed over the whole month, pension facts printed on napkins in the restaurants to promote lunchtime discussions, eight emails for every employee, five targeted based on individual circumstances and five weekly wrap-up emails.

The plan was keenly designed to make sure Samsung made the most of the month they had. A feedback survey and a focus group to highlight the key factors that employees now think about when it comes to pensions gave Samsung some incredibly pleasing statistics.

94% of employees are now actively enrolled in the pension scheme, 92 employees increased their pension contributions in the month of October rather than the monthly average of eight, 110 employees said they benefitted from 1-to-1 pension meetings and over 93% of those who attended the workshops rated them "extremely useful." A new set of activities and events is planned for the next pension month in October 2015.