What your pension scheme says about you
When you have a good company pension scheme in place, it lets people know how highly you value your staff. But how do you choose the right one?
If you’re looking for a way to boost your employer brand, you may be wrestling with this exact question. If not feeling a little overwhelmed. To get you started, here’s a quick look at the kind of pension schemes you could introduce to your business.
Company pension scheme
According to research by Aviva, pension schemes were the most popular employee benefit after annual leave. So if you want to become a more attractive place to work, make sure you give your pension scheme plenty of thought.
Alternatively, you can let us do the work for you. We can review your current offering and make sure it’s competitive. If it’s not, then we can find you a new one that better matches your business.
Group & Workplace Pensions
A group pension scheme is a type of workplace pension run by you, the employer. And it’s one of the biggest decisions you’ll make on behalf of your staff. The most common kind is a defined contribution scheme, often set up as a group personal pension. This is something you offer in line with the government’s automatic enrolment duties for workplace pensions.
As you’re no doubt aware, you’re now required by law to provide a workplace pension scheme for eligible employees, starting as soon as they join your team. Whichever pension scheme you choose must meet auto-enrolment rules. If not, your business could be faced with a serious fine from The Pensions Regulator.
Trickier still, different providers offer varying features. So finding the right one for your business isn’t easy. And while a good group pension scheme can see a big boost in staff loyalty, you need to let your employees know in writing the date that you added them to the pension scheme. You also need to explain the type of pension it is and who runs it, how much you’ll both contribute to the pot and how they can leave if they want to.
Sound like a burden too far? It can be without the right advice. Especially when it comes to keeping up with all the changing regulations. But if you’d rather offload all the hassle onto us, these kinds of pension schemes are our bread and butter. Our financial advisers will work with your business to look at fund options, any charges involved, credentials needed, plus any tax relief you can claim. We’ll also guide you through the entire pensions maze and find the policy that best fits your business.
Salary sacrifice
Salary sacrifice has become the go-to benefit for many businesses in recent years. It’s where your employees agree to reduce their earnings by an amount that’s equal to their pension contributions. In return, you then agree to pay their total pension contributions.
It’s a simple way of making pension saving more tax efficient. Better still, it usually comes with the added bonus of increasing your staff’s take-home pay as a result. Not only a great way to help them save for the future, but also to keep them happy and engaged with more money in the bank. If you’d like to explore the options for salary sacrifice, we’d love to tell you more.
The power of a pension
If you’re ready to attract high quality candidates and build a loyal staff, then a good pension scheme is one of your best tools. Yet it’s not so easy putting one in place. So if you’d like to remove all of the hassle, let us make the entire process clear and simple. Talk to one of our company pension experts today.