Saving for retirement, or life after work as we call it at Samsung, is an important part of our approach to financial wellbeing and we incorporate this into everyday life and within our varied communications portfolio. It is important to talk to employees at every stage of their work-life journey but also at their life event stages too. We tailor our communications in two ways.
First, in the employee journey we offer communications, one to ones, online and printed material, which we issue before employees join Samsung, on day one and also during their induction at day 30. Then we focus on activities and communications to highlight the importance of saving for their futures thereafter.
Second, in the employees’ life stages and by understanding that not everyone has the same requirements, we offer tailored and segmented communications around essential information that they may need based on age, life events and reviewed communications from our annual pension governance meeting as required. This could be on fund performances or contacting employees on net pay versus salary sacrifice options or even targeted tapered allowance emails; the range of topics is quite large.
At Samsung, we have found that activities can take on many shapes and forms, from traditional posters in the toilets, to text-messaging campaigns, to events in our atrium, for example, during our spooktacular Halloween-themed October Money Month in 2016. We try to incorporate as much as we can with our benefits providers to put on benefit fairs relating to financial wellness.
In line with the offerings in our package, such as free mortgage advice service, our workplace individual savings account (Isa) and employee assistance programme (EAP), we can offer much more than pension information but a whole holistic approach to financial wellness in general. This is so important for our employees so that they can make informed choices about financial matters and have access to information as and when they need it. All of this culminates in some pretty impressive return on investment (ROI): we have over 94% of our employees actively saving for their lives after work, over 70 employees investing in our workplace Isa and over £7.5m of mortgages delivered charge-free for our employees.
Joanna Bean is head of total reward, UK and Ireland at Samsung
Samsung won the award for best benefits communications, large employer at the Employee Benefits Awards 2017. Read more about why the organisation won.
