Financial Wellbeing Education: A Strategic Priority for Your 2026 Benefits Review

Pensions are back on the agenda. Research from Epassi UK published this month found that 31% of employees want higher employer pension contributions in 2026—joint top of the benefits wishlist alongside unlimited paid time off. This financial wellbeing survey of employees won’t surprise anyone who’s had conversations with staff about money lately.

But here’s the problem. Wanting a better pension and actually doing something about it are two different things.

PensionBee’s research paints a stark picture: 53% of employees say they think about their pension regularly, yet only 17% plan to review or increase their contributions this year. A third said reviewing their pension simply isn’t a priority when they’re worried about paying the bills.

That gap—between caring about retirement and actually engaging with it—is where financial wellbeing education comes in.

Why Employees Want More From Their Workplace Pension

The minimum employer pension contribution in the UK is 3% of qualifying earnings. Employees must put in at least 5%. Government data suggests the average employer contributes around 4%, which is better than the legal minimum but hardly generous.

For employees in a typical small business pension scheme, these numbers can feel underwhelming. Compound interest needs time and money to work its magic. At 4%, most people won’t be building the retirement pot they’re hoping for.

The Epassi findings confirm what many HR teams already suspect: people want employers to do more. Private medical insurance came in at 30%, with discounts and flexible working not far behind. But pensions topped the list.

Here’s the thing, though. Throwing more money at pensions doesn’t help much if employees don’t understand what they’ve got. If someone doesn’t know how salary sacrifice works, or hasn’t checked whether they’re in the right fund for their age, or has no idea what their projected retirement income looks like—then a percentage point here or there won’t shift the dial.

How Money Worries Affect Work Performance

Financial stress follows people to work. It’s not something they can leave at the door. When someone’s lying awake at night worried about money, they’re not going to be fully present in a meeting the next morning. The PensionBee data backs this up: a third of employees said money worries stop them from even thinking about long-term planning.

This creates a frustrating situation for employers. You might offer a decent pension scheme, salary sacrifice options, maybe even a savings programme—but if staff don’t understand these benefits or feel too overwhelmed to engage with them, that investment isn’t delivering value. For anyone.

Education can help break this cycle. Not advice—that’s a regulated minefield most employers rightly want to avoid. But clear, straightforward explanations of how things work? That’s something different. Helping someone understand the basics of their pension isn’t telling them what to do. It’s giving them the confidence to make their own decisions.

The Case for a Financial Wellbeing Platform in the UK Workplace

E-learning works well for this kind of education. People can dip in when they have time, revisit modules when something changes (a pay rise, a new baby, a looming retirement), and skip the bits that don’t apply to them.

A decent financial wellbeing platform will cover the obvious topics: auto-enrolment, workplace pensions, salary sacrifice, tax relief. But it should also help people join the dots—how does my workplace pension fit with the state pension? What happens if I change jobs? Should I be doing anything differently in my 50s compared to my 30s?

Supporting Employees at Different Life Stages

A 24-year-old graduate and a 58-year-old approaching retirement have completely different questions. The graduate needs to understand why starting early matters (even when retirement feels impossibly far away). The person nearing retirement needs clarity on their options for accessing their pot and how to avoid the tax traps.

One-size-fits-all sessions don’t work. Someone in their 20s will tune out of a presentation about drawdown options. Someone in their 50s doesn’t need convincing that pensions matter—they need specifics.

Digital learning lets people find what’s relevant to them. That’s the point.

Improving Engagement With Existing Benefits

There’s another issue worth mentioning. Epassi’s research found that 43% of employers offer private medical insurance, but only 16% of employees thought it was available to them. That’s a communication failure, not a benefits failure.

The same thing happens with pensions. Employers set up schemes, meet their legal obligations, maybe even go above the minimum—and then wonder why take-up is lukewarm or why employees don’t seem grateful. Often, people simply don’t realise what they’ve got.

Good education fixes this. Explain what’s on offer, show people how to access it, and make clear why it matters. Engagement tends to follow.

Planning Your 2026 Benefits Strategy

Howden’s analysis of 2026 trends suggests this won’t be a year of dramatic changes to contribution rates. Costs are rising across the board—national insurance, healthcare premiums—and most employers are focused on getting more value from what they already offer rather than adding expensive new benefits.

For SMEs especially, that means looking at engagement and education. If you can’t increase contributions, can you at least help employees understand and use what’s there? It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s a practical one.

And when employees are actively telling researchers they want more pension support, demonstrating that you’re taking financial wellbeing seriously counts for something. It might not be the pay rise they wanted, but it shows you’re listening.

Key Takeaways

Financial wellbeing isn’t a box to tick once and forget about. People’s circumstances change—new jobs, new families, market wobbles, shifting retirement dates. What made sense at 30 might need revisiting at 40.

The research is clear: employees want more help with pensions and financial planning. But many feel stuck, caught between caring about the future and being overwhelmed by the present. Education won’t solve all of that, but it gives people a starting point. Something concrete they can do, even when everything else feels uncertain.

For employers, it’s a relatively low-cost way to show genuine support—and to make sure the benefits you’re already paying for actually get used.