Why Engaging Younger Employees with Pensions Requires a New Approach

Pension engagement among younger workers has been a persistent headache for HR teams and providers alike, and new research from People’s Partnership suggests the gap between what schemes offer and what employees actually take in is, if anything, widening.

The survey, carried out by Opinium Research on behalf of People’s Partnership between December 2025 and January 2026, polled 500 independent financial advisers. That framing matters: the findings reflect what advisers observe in their clients, not what younger savers have said themselves. Both perspectives are useful, but they are not the same thing, and it is worth keeping that distinction in mind when drawing conclusions from the data.

The Numbers Worth Knowing

Three quarters of IFAs (74%) say DC pension providers need new ways to engage younger generations. Nearly two thirds (63%) believe support should start much earlier in the savings journey, and just over half (51%) think providers should do more to help members when they begin drawing on their pension in retirement. As covered by Employee Benefits, these figures have prompted renewed debate about whether the industry is doing enough to connect with people during the years that matter most.

The tools advisers are calling for are fairly consistent: digital platforms, better data and reporting, integrated retirement planning features and more personalised communications. None of this is particularly new ground. The fact that a clear majority of advisers are pointing to the same gaps does suggest, though, that the problem is structural rather than something that can be fixed with a better annual statement.

Why Younger Employees Tend to Switch Off

Start with context. Pension conversations have traditionally been aimed, implicitly or explicitly, at employees within a decade of retirement. The communications, the language and even the timing of benefits reviews have all reflected that priority. Younger workers picked up on it, rationally concluded it was not yet relevant to them, and disengaged.

That is not a failure of motivation on their part. It is a design failure.

There is also the question of competing priorities. Someone in their mid-twenties dealing with student debt, rising rent and a job market that looks very different from the one their parents navigated is not going to prioritise a pension that will not pay out for 40 years without some fairly compelling reasons to do so. Generic messaging about compound interest rarely cuts through. Specific, practical information about what their contributions actually mean in real terms is considerably more likely to land.

What Low Engagement Costs the Business

HR professionals sometimes struggle to make the internal case for investing in pension engagement, partly because the consequences of low engagement are diffuse and slow-moving rather than immediate and visible.

But they are real. Financial stress is consistently linked to lower productivity, higher absence and increased staff turnover, and pension uncertainty is a meaningful driver of financial anxiety. Beyond that, employees who do not understand their pension are much less likely to recognise its value as part of their overall package, which makes it harder to use benefits as a retention tool when it counts.

There is a straightforward business case here that often goes unmade.

Financial Education as a Practical Response

The IFA research points towards earlier intervention and better tools. Structured financial education within the workplace is one of the more practical ways to deliver both, and it does not require a large budget or a dedicated financial adviser on staff.

Done well, it is not a one-off induction session or an annual email with a PDF attached. It means giving employees access to clear, jargon-free explanations of how their pension works and what their contributions mean, at a point in their career when the information is actually relevant to them. A 25-year-old joining a company needs something quite different from a 40-year-old who has changed jobs and wants to think about consolidating old pension pots.

E-learning suits this kind of tiered, on-demand approach well. Employees can access content when a specific decision is in front of them rather than months before or after. It is also scalable in a way that one-to-one guidance is not, which makes it accessible for smaller employers who cannot justify the cost of bringing in external financial advice for every member of staff.

Aspina is currently building a financial wellbeing e-learning platform for UK employers. The resources are in development, designed to cover pensions, retirement planning and broader financial wellbeing topics in a format that works for people across different roles and life stages.

Getting the Timing Right

The consistent thread running through the research is that engagement needs to start earlier. That does not mean overloading a new employee on day one with information they cannot yet act on. It means introducing the subject early, keeping the conversation open and making sure resources are easy to find when employees are ready for them.

Building pension education into onboarding is a reasonable starting point. Making sure employees know what support exists, without having to specifically go looking for it, is another. People who understand their pension are far more likely to value it, and employees who genuinely value their benefits package are more likely to stay.

What the Research Does Not Tell Us

It is worth being direct about one gap in the data. The People’s Partnership survey captures adviser opinion, which is informed and worth taking seriously, but it does not capture what younger employees have actually said they want from pension engagement. Those two things frequently align, but not always, and there is a real risk of building engagement strategies around what advisers expect to work rather than what the intended audience has said it needs.

Employers looking to improve engagement would do well to test whatever they produce with the people it is aimed at. The direction the research points to is broadly right: earlier, more accessible and more personalised. Getting there, though, requires treating pension engagement as an ongoing conversation rather than an annual compliance task.