SCISYS-2013

Scisys Group has seen 30% of its employees increase their pension contributions since the organisation launched a workplace savings platform in November 2013.

The IT services developer, which employs more than 400 people, launched the platform to help boost pensions engagement among staff and to offer them a variety of saving options that are accessible online.

Since the launch, it has also seen 47% of staff opt to select their own investments.

Kate Wisniewski, HR manager at Scisys, says: “We wanted to give employees the freedom and flexibility to find something suitable for them. Rather than us make decisions for them, we wanted to empower them to make decisions about their pension.”

The organisation decided to launch a workplace savings platform, provided by Hargreaves Lansdown, when its group personal pension (GPP), which it set up in 2006, started to look dated in terms of online functionality.

As part of the launch process, it introduced a self-invested personal pension (Sipp), an individual savings account and an investment account, which are all available on the platform.

As a result, Scisys has seen 85% of its staff register to use the scheme online, and 35% of its workforce log in to view their online pension account at least once a month.

“It is about making pensions go further and our staff, who we think are quite intelligent when it comes to their finances, had outgrown the old scheme,” says Wisniewski. “We treated employees like individuals and the corporate wrap meant that offering staff a pension was not the be all and end all. The savings platform makes pensions go further, with the Sipp being a key part of that.”