How FirstGroup doubled its online engagement through AE comms
Transport operator FirstGroup has seen its online engagement more than double since before auto-enrolment following a tailored, multimedia communication exercise last year to educate its 30,000-plus employees on pensions.
Last month, its rewards website saw 6,829 unique visits, up from 2,866 in the run-up to auto-enrolment (see graph). The site, which hosts pension modellers, video, and facts and figures, alongside other workplace benefits, provided users with tailored education ahead of implementing auto-enrolment last April.
“The key thing was simplification,” said John Chilman, head of rewards and pensions at the company. “We wanted to take the messages and make them as simple and as powerful as we could.”
The operator’s bus driver population has a low average reading age, and so the employer wanted to avoid loading its staff with technical jargon.
“We did have some messages saying, ‘It was really good, [it] really helped me understand what was going on’,” said Chilman.
John Aitchison, a director at communications company Penkom, which worked with FirstGroup on the campaign, said it was key that employees did not need to input any information, as their fund values and investment choices were automatically populated. “It is combining that high degree of personalisation with information that they can just sit back and watch it play to them.”
The employer’s initial opt-out rate was 15 per cent, but stripping out those who had previously rejected a workplace pension, it is less than 10 per cent, according to Chilman.
The company is now focusing on how to make the most of its pension statements and show staff their benefits as clearly as possible.
“Now people are in, it is about making people value that benefit more,” said Chilman. “Auto-enrolment for a lot of companies has cost them money but hasn’t bought them engagement with the workforce.”
FirstGroup: key facts
- FirstGroup's AE scheme has two levels for different groups of employees: one at 5% matching employer/employee contribution, and the other at 2% matching, building up to 5% over time.
- Nine in 10 staff are now registered to use the website.
- The rewards website includes information on pay, shares and other employee benefits such as bus and rail travel offers, as well as pensions information.
- It also contains a living costs section that enables savers to predict their retirement living costs by selecting a wish list of future expenditure.
Trevor Rutter, communication consultant at Like Minds, said clicks alone could not be relied on to monitor the response, and added schemes could use a pop-up questionnaire to evaluate the usefulness of their digital tools. “What you want to know is, was that a satisfactory experience?,” he said.
Laith Khalaf, head of corporate research at corporate wrap provider Hargreaves Lansdown, said ease of access was crucial to sustained engagement from employees.
Websites that allow members to see where they are invested and make changes will see happier returning customers than those where members have to go through extra steps such as requesting valuations from their provider.
“All of that deters people from doing it,” said Khalaf. “You just get caught up in the first hurdles.”