Almost one in four (23%) members of staff have no pension plan in place, despite the requirement for employers to provide and automatically enrol employees on to a scheme.
The research has been carried out by HR and payroll services business MHR International to run alongside Pensions Awareness Day taking place on today (15 September). It polled 1,413 UK-based employees and has shown that some of today’s workforce are not prepared for their future.
The findings revealed that 58% are struggling to understand how the schemes work and how they should contribute, highlighting that automatically enrolling employees doesn’t always help them to better understand how pensions work or why they actually need them.
A further 80% of workers admitted that their employer doesn’t provide external personal finance advice as a benefit, leaving them without the resources to educate themselves on this topic.
When asked the question of whether they reduced their pension contribution during the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, 6.4% said yes and it is still reduced, and 3.3% answered yes but their contribution has now increased.
In addition to this, the survey found that despite employers being required to provide employees with and automatically enrol them onto a scheme, 58% of the workforce is opting to forgo financial security due to a lack of understanding around how these types of pension schemes work.
Mark Jenkins, CFO at MHR, said: “These findings show the stark reality of how unprepared today’s workforces are for their future, a concerning reality to be reflected upon this Pensions Awareness Day. The onus is on employers to facilitate pensions education as part of their financial wellbeing initiatives and support the future financial security of the employees in their business.”