Morrisons launched a campaign to help its employees understand why they need to save for the future and how to go about it ahead of its auto-enrolment staging date.
Its Save Your Dough campaign is aimed at Morrisons 135,000 employees spread across four divisions as part of the organisation’s auto-enrolment strategy. Wendy Taylor, HR director at Morrisons, speaking at the National Association of Pensions Funds’ conference, said that when the organisation began looking at auto-enrolment it realised it could be an engagement exercise rather than just a compliance one.
The campaign includes in-store champions who are given further information on saving, two booklets on saving money and one on saving for retirement and a website. The supermarket chain also worked with Alvin Hall, a financial educator and television personality, who presented payday podcasts on a range of issues on the website and gave three employees a financial makeover helping them to deal with their money issues, which were then used case studies for other staff.
According to Taylor, 44,500 employees said that the campaign has helped them improve their finances.
Following the introduction of the campaign, Morrisons launched its new pension on 24 September. It is a defined benefit cash balance scheme which will provide employees with a guaranteed pension pot when they retire. Employees could opt in to the scheme ahead of Morrisons’ 1 October staging date. According to Taylor, 9,000 employees have opted into the scheme since September.
