Why Employees Need Help Thinking Beyond the Next 12 Months

Ask most people whether they have a financial plan and they will tell you they mean to sort one out. According to Fidelity International’s Global Sentiment Survey, which surveyed more than 38,000 working adults worldwide, nearly two-thirds of UK workers (64%) have no financial plan beyond the next 12 months. One in five has nothing mapped out beyond the next few weeks.

That is not a fringe problem. It is the norm for the majority of the working population, and it has consequences that land squarely in the workplace.

Most Employees Are Living Month to Month Financially

Of the 64% with no long-term plan, 43% are thinking only a few months ahead and 21% are making it up as they go. Two-fifths said increasing their savings and investments is their most pressing financial need, which suggests the intention to do better is there. What is missing is the knowledge and confidence to act on it.

The pension piece is where this becomes most serious for employers. A workplace pension is, for most people, the largest financial asset they will build in their lifetime outside of property. Yet understanding of how pensions work remains patchy across the workforce, and the gap between what people have saved and what they will actually need in retirement is stark.

Research from Pensions UK spells it out plainly. Only around a quarter of UK workers are on track to save enough for a moderate retirement, now costed at £32,700 a year for a single person. Just 9% are heading for what is considered comfortable, set at £45,400 a year. For most employees, those numbers represent a future they have not yet started to plan for.

Financial Anxiety Makes Long-Term Planning Harder

There is a fairly well-worn path between financial stress and short-term thinking. When someone is stretched by immediate pressures, next year feels manageable but retirement feels impossibly abstract. So they deal with what is in front of them and put everything else off.

The knock-on effect in the workplace is real. Financial stress affects concentration, confidence and productivity, and employees who are worried about money are less likely to engage with the benefits their employer is already providing. Our article on financial wellbeing and silent stress looks at why so many employees never flag these concerns at work, even when support is there for the taking.

Worth noting too: this is not primarily a low-income issue. The Fidelity data shows the same patterns across different salary levels.

The Gap Between What HR Teams Assume and What Employees Know

One of the more uncomfortable findings in this area of research is how wide the gap tends to be between employer assumptions and employee reality. Most HR teams believe their people have a reasonable grasp of their pension. Most employees, when asked, do not.

The pension engagement and understanding gap is particularly evident around contribution rates, investment choices and projected retirement income. Alongside that sits the problem of pension misinformation in the workplace, where incorrect assumptions go unchallenged because nobody has created a straightforward opportunity to address them.

For HR managers who want to get to grips with the basics themselves before rolling out anything to staff, our pension training guide for HR managers is a reasonable place to start.

Employees Are Turning to AI for Financial Guidance

One finding from the Fidelity survey is worth pausing on. Almost two-thirds of respondents said they would, or already do, use artificial intelligence to understand how much they will need in retirement. More than half said they would use it to support investment decisions within their workplace pension.

That tells you something useful: employees are not passive about this. They are actively looking for guidance and reaching for whatever is available. The problem is that an AI chatbot is a fairly unreliable foundation for decisions that will shape someone’s retirement income over decades. Employer-provided education, properly structured and verified, is a much sounder starting point.

Why One-Off Sessions Do Not Stick

Seminars, printed guides and annual pension statements all have their place, but they share a common weakness: they happen once, they are easy to ignore, and there is no way to know whether anything landed. For a workforce spread across different locations and working patterns, they are also hard to deliver consistently.

Short online learning modules work differently. Employees can dip in and out around their schedule, revisit things when they become relevant, and build understanding gradually rather than trying to absorb everything in a single session. Employers get visibility of who has engaged and with what. You can see how the Aspina platform approaches this and what the learning covers.

The topics that seem to shift behaviour most are the practical ones: how pension contributions build up over time, how salary sacrifice can increase take-home pay while boosting pension savings, and why employees so often fail to use the workplace benefits already available to them. That last point matters more than it might seem. A lot of the value employers are already providing simply goes unused because people do not understand it well enough to act.

A Starting Point for Employers

The Fidelity data does not suggest employees are disengaged or indifferent. It suggests they are stuck, caught between the pressures of now and a future that feels too complicated to approach without help.

Providing that help does not need to be expensive or complicated. It does need to be consistent, accessible and available to everyone, not just the people who show up to optional lunchtime talks.

Our financial wellbeing guide for SMEs is a practical introduction for organisations working out where to begin. For a broader look at what a structured programme could involve, the Aspina platform and our FAQs cover the detail. Or if it is easier to have a conversation, get in touch.