Ascential is a fast-growing global organisation which delivers specialist information, analytics and ecommerce optimisation for consumer brands. It has 2,500-plus employees worldwide, of which just under 1,000 are in the UK.
More than 85% of current UK employees have taken up its workplace pension with Aviva. Ascential pays from 5% up to 9% in matching pension contributions based on length of service. The employer has held multiple online seminars over the past year for its staff through Aviva. These focused on increasing pension engagement through the use of the My Aviva tool, and also on pot consolidation and the importance of keeping track of pension policies, in recognition that the Covid-19 (Coronvirus) pandemic has led to people thinking more about their finances.
Ascential drives pensions education internally through emails, its intranet and internal communication channel. The pandemic has meant that face-to-face education was put on hold. Sophie Agar, reward specialist at Ascential, says: “When we are able, we fully plan to hold face-to-face, group and one-to-one sessions too. We also use Aviva’s communication tools internally. Through the pandemic Aviva provided online seminars, where our employees joined live sessions to understand their options, learn more about pensions, how to get online and understand their retirement options.”
Ascential engages with Aviva on a monthly basis to understand its and its employees’ challenges to deliver tailored and segmented communications.
Agar, aims to get take up as “close to 100% as possible” with more communications planned in the next few months. Ascential plans to segment employees into groups of those who are already contributing and, may be encourage them to contribute more, as well as those who are not contributing to encourage them to start.
Agar says: “The younger population is the least engaged with their pension so it is about delivering the correct message to help them understand [they] might not be close to retirement but why it is important to start investing now. What is the difference if [they] are going to start investing now or in the future? That message resonates a lot more with someone younger than someone coming close to retirement.”