Microsoft has increased its payments in to the company’s defined contribution (DC) pension scheme after undertaking an industry-wide benchmarking exercise.
It now contributes 6% into the group personal pension (GPP) plan for staff who pay 4% into the scheme, and 7% where staff pay 5%.
The IT giant previously contributed a maximum of 5% into the GPP, provided that an employee paid 3%. It will continue to contribute 5% where employees only put 3% into the scheme.
Mary Giles, head of compensation and benefits at Microsoft, said: “We have benchmarked our pension scheme against other IT companies and realised that we were below the average contribution level.”
Microsoft has no plans to make any further changes to its DC plan, which has a take-up rate of 95% among employees.
“I don’t think we can get a much higher take up than 95%. The small number that don’t contribute to the DC scheme clearly aren’t interested in pensions at the moment,” explained Giles.