Why pensions finally feel like a benefit at One Retail Group

Meet One Retail Group

One Retail Group is a multinational retailer that sells its own line of personal care, home, and kitchen products online and via high street retailers. Based in North London, the team of 88 have been listed among the UK’s top 100 fastest-growing companies.

We spoke to Ruth Massey, People and Culture Manager, about how One Retail Group is using Penfold’s pension scheme to help employees understand the value of the most expensive benefit the organisation offers: the pension.

The Problem

With a fast-growing team, there’s more pressure on Ruth to hire high-quality people quickly and incentivise them to stick around. This makes employee benefits more important than ever. Ruth explained,

“Because we’re growing, we count on individual talent more than other companies, so losing a key employee can really hurt. We offer a number of benefits, but pensions stuck out to me as an opportunity to differentiate.”

“However, our pension scheme with Nest was our most expensive and most overlooked benefit. Employees weren’t engaging with their pensions and we saw a number of employees opt-out.”

Ruth noticed that there would be an added challenge to encouraging pensions to be seen as a benefit: how to prompt employees to view their pension contributions as an investment, rather than a cost.

“Our team has an average age of 29, so they saw their pension as eating into their take-home pay, rather than as an opportunity to put money away for the future without paying tax,” she said.

Enter Penfold

In early 2022 Ruth was introduced to Penfold and quickly discovered that our workplace pension would help improve her employees’ experience of their pensions. From day one, Ruth recognised that Penfold’s approach to engaging employees was very different to Nest.

“Penfold organised launch events for employees to talk through how their pensions scheme worked, how their app worked, along with important features of pensions more general, like compounding interest.”

“It really couldn’t have gone any better. After the sessions, employees started to opt back into their pension and increase their contributions through the app. Almost overnight pensions went from being something they rarely thought about, to a benefit they understood and felt in control of.”

Benefits

Now 78% of employees access their pension through Penfold’s app to adjust contributions, understand how much they have saved, or set savings goals. Ruth shared,

“Penfold is definitely the most straightforward platform I’ve used.”

Plus, Penfold’s dedicated account managers are always on hand to help Ruth process payroll, and help One Retail Group’s employees get to grips with how their pension works.

“Penfold’s account managers still talk to the team frequently about the benefits of a pension, so every time they see their pension deducted on their payslip, they know it’s going into a savings pot they can check on within the app.”

“Ultimately, this demonstrates that they are earning what goes into their pension, it’s not being taken away, and just that understanding helps employees feel like their contributions are valued.”

If you're looking to revolutionise your employees’ pension experience like One Retail Group did, don't wait. Speak to our team now and discover how Penfold can make a difference for your business

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