It is great to see our pension provider, Normal Life, running webinars. I do like to see it earning its money and to know that our employees will benefit from the free education. This month, Normal Life has three online sessions lined up in one day which seems a bit excessive, but I am guessing they are aimed at different groups.
It is a bit quiet, so I sign up for all of them. Sadly, when it comes to the last two, Big Bad Boss puts in an overlapping meeting. Huff. Some people use scheduling within the mail platform to check your availability. My boss and other Higher Beings, I have noticed, just assume their time is more important than whatever you are doing; they just dump meetings in my schedule without consideration. Luckily, the retirement webinars are recorded and auto posted on our intranet’s flexible benefits site, so I can still watch at the end of the day.
Employee disengagement
The first one is entitled ‘Introduction to pensions’, so I am not expecting to hear anything I do not know already. Indeed, if I did learn something it would be something to worry about. It is hard to stay engaged but I do not think it is just because I know the topic. The host is speaking in a low monotone, and the slides are rather dull, with lots of pictures of piles of coins and smiling seniors. Original, eh?
Normal Life explains the concept of compound interest and the importance of saving from an early age, demonstrating this by calculating the final pension pot achieved by people saving from various ages. I know I work with numbers, but surely we cannot have many employees who need this spelt out. I look over at my colleague Lazy Susan who is staring vacantly out of the window. Ok, maybe we do have a few.
Normal Life also demonstrates the impact of making contributions at the automatic-enrolment rate, as well as the slightly higher rate to which the company will match, and for making additional voluntary contributions. This slide may cost the company a few percentage points as I can see many employees being prompted to up their contributions to maximise the company input. Do I mind? No, it is the right thing for employees to do after all.
The second webinar is called ‘Making the most of your pension’. It is getting late in my day and both Lazy Susan and Big Bad Boss have gone home. Good. I’m guessing this session will be aimed at my demographic, someone not exactly new to work, but not ready for retirement either. Not really. Once again, it covers the importance of making contributions from a young age, as well as the benefit of company-matching contributions.
The only thing it adds is a section on determining how much to save. This is broken out into three levels of spending, from moderate to comfortable. I keep seeing these estimates quoted in the press. I do not know where they get their data from, but the so-called comfortable level of target retirement income is ridiculously low. I could not live on that even if my mortgage was paid, and the so-called moderate income would not feed my cat.
I start to worry about our employees who will settle for saving towards these low targets. I realise even I may not be saving enough. I make a note to up my AVCs. It is shameful really, that it took a webinar to nudge me to do that. I kid myself I know about this stuff.
It is getting really late now, and I am tempted to skip the last session titled ‘Getting ready to retire’ but no, I should be aware of what information our employees are hearing. It starts off by covering, you guessed it, the importance of starting pension savings early in life and the impact of contributions matched by the employer. It also covers the estimates for pension income required across different standards of living. It is pretty much the same presentation. It does not impact me personally,
Mis-sold webinar
I am a long way from retiring in both time and money, but I feel our older employees have been mis-sold this session. I am also worried if any of the employees signed up for all three webinars as I have done. Surely not; it is hard enough to get engagement on one training session, let alone three. But if they did join all the webinars, they will be bored and tired like me if they did. Not only that but anyone close to retirement is missing out on important information about different ways to access the pension such as drawdown and annuities. Normal Life really ought to cover that when it comes to ‘Getting ready for retirement’. Sure enough, the next morning Normal Life posts another webinar ‘Your options on retirement’. Call me a masochist but I sign up for that one too.
I am disappointed to discover this additional session is exactly the same presentation as ‘Getting ready for retirement’. Aaagh. I am going to have to have it out with Normal Life. Our account manager is most apologetic, and he tells me that there was a technical glitch and the same recording was posted twice. So, it was not the same live? No, he insists, all webinars were pitched differently to appeal to different audiences with very different content. I do not know whether to believe him.
Big Bad Boss tells me he joined the last webinar live and it was indeed the same as the one before. Gotcha Normal Life. It agrees to put on another two webinars with my input on the slides before they go out. There is only one problem with that idea; I have to sit through it all again.
Next time… Candid deals with the change
