Royal Mail runs survey as freedoms heighten need for engagement
The Royal Mail Pension Plan is running an online member survey to judge engagement and levels of understanding among its members as freedom and choice makes member decisions even more important.
Auto-enrolment means members are now essentially defaulted into their pension scheme, requiring little or no engagement or understanding.
However, both the freedom and choice reforms and changes to tax have increased the level of stewardship an individual has to take over their pension to ensure the right outcome.
Freedom and choice has suddenly catapulted member engagement to the top of the agenda
A link to the survey pops up automatically on the scheme website, and as an incentive to take part, respondents are entered into a prize draw to win shopping vouchers worth between £20 and £250.
The questions, when not categorising members according to age, gender, scheme section and so on, are aimed at judging how engaged members are with aspects of the scheme’s output such as its website, benefit statements and newsletter. It also asks how these might be improved.
On top of that, it surveys the members’ understanding of their pension more generally, asking when they believe they will be able to retire on a full pension.
The Royal Mail scheme previously aimed to increase member engagement by revamping its communication strategy in late 2013, after more than half of its members said they did not understand how the scheme works.
A spokesperson for the scheme said: “The Royal Mail Pension Plan is committed to delivering timely communications and ensuring helpful engagement with its members. We have undertaken to review and test our member communications and this survey forms part of an evaluation cycle that we use to form our thinking about our written communications with members.”
Real examples
Jonathan Reynolds, client director at independent trustee company Capital Cranfield, said changes to pensions policy have made member engagement much more important than it was previously.
“Freedom and choice has suddenly catapulted this to the top of the agenda,” he said.
Prior to the changes, some figures showed as many as 95 per cent of defined contribution members in the default fund, Reynolds said.
“In many respects, trustees were quite relaxed about that. If you chose a good default fund you could get away with having unengaged members.”
The most important way to engage members, he added, was by giving them real examples of how colleagues had used their pension.
“The most important thing is a really good news story,” said Reynolds. “I don’t think any amount of clever communication is going to make people wake up in the morning and want to read about their pension. [But] if they read that Paul has just retired and done all this amazing stuff…”
Tools for measurement
Karen Bolan, chief engagement officer at communications consultancy AHC, said surveys were a useful way to gain feedback, but that she looks to “drill down into some of the potential issues with the questions by carrying out focus groups”.
“Measurement is quite a fundamental part of assessment,” she said.
Online surveys can be a cost-effective way of reaching members, but often schemes have low online engagement, making paper surveys more practical.
Daniel Taylor, head of administration services at consultancy Premier, said: “You get a better response with a mailout. Those accessing the website are [already] more engaged, there’s likely to be some skewing [of the responses].”
Despite this, Anne Oliver, head of communications at consultancy Aon Employee Benefits, said Aon is looking to increase the use of online surveys.
She said: “We get some very rich information about whether the person has clicked on the email, whether they’ve looked at it. If they haven’t, we can reissue it or send a paper copy.”