Transforming a complex pension fund's engagement strategy

The trustees of the Unilever UK Pension Fund care deeply about helping each member have a better retirement. But to achieve this, members need to understand the fund, be motivated to act and have access to help when they need it.

We worked with the trustee on a 3-year engagement strategy. We carried out user research, reviewed existing comms, sifted admin data and ran workshops with trustees, employees and providers.

Together we agreed a set of goals: to achieve complete clarity of purpose as a trustee, then to deliver for members:

• evidence-based engagement
• communication that works for everybody
• joined-up, multi-channel journeys

A major test of this strategy has involved communicating a complex change to benefits.

In 2021 Unilever introduced a ‘benefits envelope’ for employees, worth an extra 25% of pensionable pay. This can be used for pension, to buy life and ill-health cover, taken as extra taxable pay, or all of the above. Employees decide what to do with their benefits envelope in a 6-week period every summer.

We created letters, posters, emails and videos to explain the benefits envelope to employees and created a website where they can check their choices, get help and ultimately, tell Unilever what they want to do.

Each year we’ve refined the website, making it easier to use and moving the trustees closer to their goal of delivering fully digital comms. This includes changes made in response to:

• new technology, such as single sign-on, which allows members’ information to be pre-populated
• user testing, which has guided us in simplifying all aspects of the experience, from reducing words on the page by as much as 90% to evolving the website from being a broad repository of information to a simple task for users to complete

uukpf.co.uk