Should you communicate to members during difficult times?

David Millar

LCP Principal

Anyone who has spent any time thinking about how to communicate pensions will have, at some time or other, been assailed by doubt. Will anyone read this given that there’s so much other news? With so much going on in the world, it’s a fair question. But what can you do about it?

At the time of writing, the big news story is the war in Ukraine. For many members that may seem unconnected with pensions and retirement, but any Trustee board will know that this is a topic that demands consideration at the board meeting. I consider that to be telling – if something is important enough for the Trustees to discuss, it might be something worth sharing with the members. Not every member will engage or see the relevance, but many will – and an article that explains why a tragic human event in a country far away might demand consideration by the Trustee makes the pension scheme immediately relevant to the world around the member, while also bringing the role of the Trustee board to life in a way that is engaging and interesting.

However, I suspect that a majority of schemes will not have produced communications to members on this topic (although well done if you have). Compare that with the world of retail, where almost every major brand has provided some form of update on how the Ukraine conflict has affected its supply chain or people and how they are making sure that those issues are managed. Retail is very different to the institutional world of pensions, but that doesn’t mean we cannot learn from it.

There are plenty of examples where national or international news stories are communicated to members – the most recent example being the pandemic, where many schemes produced excellent communications explaining how the Trustees were keeping things running during those exceptional circumstances. Similarly, I suspect that we will see a growing number of schemes starting to communicate about high inflation – something that the UK hasn’t seen the effects of in the working life of most members. Helping people to make sense of the big issues from a pensions perspective is a valuable way of making pensions something that are a day-to-day consideration, rather than a distant idea that relates to the sunlit uplands of retirement. As a result, I suggest we should be doing more communication on topical issues, rather than less. This form of communication is not without challenge – it has to be credible, sensitive and not overly artificial in how it connects to pensions. But even with those restrictions in place, there are plenty of news items that fall into the bracket of ‘potentially helpful content for members’. Yes, you might struggle to weave a pensions message into the next big sporting event that happens, but almost anything that the Trustee or governance board discusses can have a communication angle – even potentially sensitive issues where not all the content can be explained.

As a last point, I’m often asked ‘is now is the right time to communicate?’ Often this is driven by one of three concerns

  • the Trustees don’t have all the answers;
  • it’s a bad time for the members;
  • the members won’t like what we are telling them.

It’s probably worth an article on its own, but after a long time in pensions communications my rule of thumb is definitely ‘communicate more, not less, and it’s never too early to introduce a new topic’. Little and often beats important and rare. Getting the balance right is an important part of your member communication strategy.

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