Attracting and retaining Elvie's best and brightest with an improved pension

Elvie is a health-tech business who design and make products that improve the health and quality of life of women. Their stand-out products include a breast pump and pelvic floor training device.

They’ve had a phenomenal growth story - growing from 35 people in January 2019 to over 200 in January 2022 and are now selling in the US, EU and China.

Elvie’s challenge

In September 2021, Elvie’s People team began a review of their benefits package, specifically looking at health and financial wellbeing, in response to anecdotal comments that new joiners had been disappointed by their current pension offering. Initially, the team wanted to explore how they could move beyond offering minimum contribution amounts and weren’t considering a change in provider.

Through conversations with Penfold, they realised how little support they were receiving from Smart Pension and that coordinating pensions for the team didn’t have to be so stressful or time-consuming.

Penfold was able to step in and answer pension questions directly instead of going through the People team - this level of responsive service was not something they’d seen before in the workplace pension space.

Penfold’s solution

Through conversations with Penfold’s pension experts, Elvie aligned on increasing their contribution amounts from 3% and 5% to offering a matched contribution, 5% from them and 5% from the employee on total earnings.

They’ve also been able to offer salary sacrifice for their employees - reducing both the business and their team members’ National Insurance tax bill.

“The human element of Penfold’s service and the contact we had with their support team felt like a security blanket - you know they’ll be there if something goes wrong.”

Pension set up:

• 5% Employee, 5% Employer contributions
• Contributions calculated on Total Earnings
• Salary Sacrifice default for everyone (employees can opt out)

Results

Pensions have been elevated to a core part of Elvie’s retention and engagement strategy. Elvie’s team are highly engaged in the new offering, as demonstrated by:

• 66% of Elvie’s team have logged into the Penfold app.
• 45% of Elvie’s team have requested a pension transfer to Penfold.
• 20% of the team are contributing more than the company standard.

Pension admin automation has driven efficiencies for the People team, specifically around helping higher earners with automated tax relief claims.

Positive feedback from Elvie’s team about Penfold’s app experience with team members proactively reaching out to ask about contributions.