Heywood
Pension empowerment begins with transparent communication.
Pensions Awareness Week provides an excellent opportunity to highlight the importance of educating people on the benefits of a pension and showcase the importance of saving for later in life.
As a leading pension software provider, we’ve committed to delivering exceptional solutions to our clients and applying our knowledge to build better futures for our own people. Over the years, we’ve fostered a culture of engagement within the business, and here’s how we’re doing it.
Where we are as an organisation
We compared our own pension scheme activity last quarter to the same period in 2025, and uncovered these impressive stats:
- 75% - the increased number of log-ins to our pension portal
- 10 times a year - the number of times each person viewed their pension balances and completed actions, on average
- 18% - how much we've grown our mobile app usage by
These stats are great, but how do they compare to other companies? Our provider told us that, compared with similar businesses they serve, we had:
- 35% more employee pension engagement
- 23% more employees who completed an expression of wish
How we do it
We’ve committed to a programme of ongoing communication efforts, designed to educate, inform and remind employees to plan for the future proactively.
Our strategy reinforces these messages and highlights the value of thinking ahead by combining touchpoints and communication methods that appeal to the different ways people prefer to digest information.
Most importantly, we provide tangible, practical reasons for employees to take action and connect with their pensions.
Financial wellbeing days
Hive Days are Heywood’s regular learning and development days, where the company meets to enhance our work practices and share knowledge.
We regularly invite our pension experts and benefits consultants to host sessions with specific aims and audiences in mind.
Topics have included:
- ‘Starting to save (early careers) – Why your older self will thank you for giving your pension some attention’.
Aimed at those under 30. - ‘Planning for Prosperity (mid-life MOT) – the questions we should ask ourselves to create meaningful goals for the future.’
Aimed at those aged between 30 and 50. - ‘Road to retirement (pre-retirement) – explore how people can access their savings and why it’s important to understand how income tax is applied’.
Aimed at those 50+
Confidential guidance
To personalise the experience, we offer 1-2-1 sessions with our pension provider, where employees can ask questions confidentially about matters that directly impact their journey. While they can only offer guidance and not financial advice, people have reported that explaining the options in relation to their situation makes it easy to understand what’s available.
Making pensions part of the routine
In 2025, we published our Pension Pulse report. Our research revealed that the accuracy of members' pension information varied across providers, with schemes recording 10% of home addresses and 9% of surnames incorrectly.
Aware of this, our People team have automated a reminder to our people to factor in their pension when making major life changes, such as marriage, moving house and getting divorced.
We prioritise making our messages clear, concise and action-based, with a handy list of tasks people should complete and what Heywood has done to help.
The messages take a holistic approach to considering the changes in a wider context, include useful links and factor in:
- Payroll
- Pension contact details and beneficiaries
- HMRC
- Life assurance
- Emergency contact information
By including pension information among other key benefits and processes, we aim to make pension awareness a routine part of people’s lives rather than an annual exercise. Our results are impressive, but there is always more work to be done.
How are you raising pension awareness this week? Connect with us on LinkedIn and let us know!
