This Pension Awareness Week, our Director of Omny Benefits, Paul Andrews, explores why pensions should be seen as more than just a workplace benefit, and how employers can unlock greater value for both their people and their business.
For many employees, pensions are something happening quietly in the background. Money goes in every month, an annual statement arrives, and retirement feels distant enough to worry about another day.
For employers, that presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
A workplace pension is one of the most valuable long-term benefits an organisation can offer. Yet if employees don’t understand it, engage with it, or recognise its value, is it really delivering everything it could?
From attracting and retaining talent to strengthening your overall employee wellbeing proposition, pensions and benefits can play a far greater role in your people strategy than simply meeting a requirement. Unlocking that value starts with understanding what matters to your employees, communicating your offering effectively and ensuring your benefits remain relevant throughout the employee lifecycle.
As Pension Awareness Week 2026 puts pensions firmly back in the spotlight, now is a good time for employers to ask a bigger question:
👉 You’re paying for the pension, but do your employees value it (or is it just seen as an additional tax)?
A pension shouldn’t just tick a box
Auto-enrolment has undoubtedly made pension saving a more established part of working life. However, simply being enrolled in a pension doesn’t mean employees are actively engaged with their financial future or planning for retirement, and usually quite the opposite.
For employers, recognising pensions as more than an administrative requirement is crucial. It’s part of an employee’s overall reward package and, potentially, one of the biggest investments an employer makes in their long-term financial wellbeing.
If employees don’t fully understand what their employer is contributing, how their pension works or what it could mean for their future, much of its actual value is lost.
This is where employers have an opportunity to move from mandatory pension involvement to pension engagement.
Our recent webinar, Using Pensions and Benefits to Attract, Engage and Retain Employees, explores how employers can use pensions as a tool to attract, engage and retain top talent, and the importance of creating value for employees.
The important word here is value.
Businesses are spending significant sums on pensions and employee benefits, but investment alone doesn’t guarantee engagement. A package might look excellent on paper, but if employees don’t understand what’s available or how it’s relevant to them, its impact can be limited.
The starting point shouldn’t therefore be:
“What benefits can we add?”
It should be either:
- “What do our people actually value?”
- “How can we maximise what we already provide?”
People all have different priorities, and those priorities can change considerably depending on people’s circumstances and life stages. A strong benefits proposition recognises that, rather than assuming the same offering will resonate equally with everybody.
It is one reason employers should regularly step back and review not only what they offer, but how relevant, competitive and understood that offering really is.
For some employees, their knowledge may extend little further than seeing a deduction on their payslip each month. With pension contributions playing a greater role in how people assess job offers and overall reward packages, offering a competitive pension and improving employee engagement has never been more important for acquiring and retaining top talent.
Pension communication is just as important as the benefit itself
Employers can offer an excellent pension scheme and a compelling benefits package, however, if nobody knows about them, understands them or remembers they exist, their ability to influence engagement and retention is significantly reduced.
Communication cannot be a once-and-done exercise.
Employers should think about how pensions and benefits are communicated throughout the employee journey, from recruitment and onboarding to key life moments and ongoing conversations about financial wellbeing.
And importantly, communication needs to be accessible.
Pensions have traditionally been surrounded by terminology that can make them feel complicated. For someone who isn’t already interested in the subject, technical language can create another reason to disengage.
Pensions need to be made easier to understand, and not to expect employees to be or become pension experts.
That means communicating the value in plain English and helping people understand the practical questions they really care about: “What does this mean for me?” or “How can I stop working one day?”
Pension Awareness Week is a perfect opportunity to encourage employees to take a simple pension “check-in”, by providing straightforward information designed to make pension planning feel more accessible.
Don’t assume younger employees aren’t interested
There can be a temptation to assume pensions only become interesting to people as they approach retirement. However, this is simply not the case.
A 25-year-old employee might not describe their workplace pension as their most exciting employee benefit. However, that doesn’t mean long-term financial security isn’t relevant to them.
The challenge is making the subject understandable and relatable.
Rather than focusing solely on what somebody could receive decades in the future, employers can help employees understand what is happening today: what they are contributing, what their employer is adding and the potential impact of the decisions they make over time.
Providing access to Personal Financial Support will build on this understanding, making financial planning more accessible, whilst helping employees feel more informed and confident about their future.
Building that understanding earlier in someone’s career can help turn pensions from a passive payroll deduction into something they recognise as a valuable part of their reward.
Benefits can help tell employees what you value as an employer
Employee benefits are about more than meeting expectations. They’re an opportunity to stand out as an employer, attract the right people and give them more reasons to stay. Invest in your people, and you invest in the long-term success of your business.
It can demonstrate how seriously you take employee wellbeing, health, family life and the longer-term security of your people. Done well, benefits become part of the story you tell existing employees and prospective recruits about what working for your organisation actually means.
That becomes particularly important when businesses are competing for talented people.
Salary will always matter, of course. However, the employment proposition extends much further than salary alone. Workplace pensions and benefits can strengthen the overall package and give employees additional reasons to join, stay and engage with a business.
That is why pensions shouldn’t sit in isolation from conversations about recruitment, retention and employee experience.
Pension Awareness Week is an opportunity for employers too
Pension Awareness Week naturally encourages individuals to look at their retirement savings. In addition, I believe it should also prompt employers to take stock.
Ask yourself:
- Do our employees understand our pension scheme and the contribution we make?
- Are we communicating our pension and benefits regularly and clearly?
- Does our benefits package reflect what our people actually value?
- Are employees making full use of the benefits available to them?
- When did we last benchmark or review our pension and benefits offering?
- Are we using our benefits effectively as part of recruitment and retention?
The answers may reveal that the issue isn’t necessarily the benefits themselves. It may simply be how they’re structured, positioned or communicated.
Make pensions part of the conversation
Pension Awareness Week shouldn’t be about getting employees to think about their pension for five days before forgetting about it for another year.
The bigger opportunity is to start a conversation that continues throughout the employee lifecycle.
For employers, that means looking beyond pension administration and thinking strategically about the role pensions and benefits can play in your overall people proposition.
Because when employees understand the value of what you provide, your benefits can do more than support their financial future.
They can help your organisation attract the right people, engage the people you already have and give them another compelling reason to stay.
Is your benefits strategy delivering the value it should?
At Omny Benefits, we help organisations review, develop and communicate employee benefits strategies that work for both the business and its people.
If Pension Awareness Week has prompted you to take another look at your workplace pension or wider benefits offering, speak to our team to find out how we can help.
