Are you delivering a horse or a camel?

I provide comms for DB pension scheme members with the aim of providing a positive experience for everyone dealing with the scheme.    

Mostly everything I write is reviewed by a wide range of stakeholders and there’s always a necessary raft of technical and legal compliance to shoehorn in. It can be a real challenge to keep things simple.  If you're not careful, clarity gets muddied, things end up written by committee, and a simple question from a member can result in a response from an actuary that reads like the 5,000 word answer to a PMI exam. 

Beating a lone drum about the importance of writing about pensions in plain English has until recently for me, been a solitary pursuit. So it’s great to now be part of Barnett Waddingham’s DrumRoll team, a creative group of skilled individuals who are experts in their fields, and who understand pensions and best practice, what’s coming up, and the direction in which the industry is heading. 

As a collective, DrumRoll share experiences, act as a sounding board and bring authority to the importance of positive engagement. It’s refreshing working with likeminded people - you spark ideas, learn, and raise your game. There’s an exchange of insight, knowledge and experience, and a buzz of creative enthusiasm. I’ve joined DrumRoll at a pivotal time as the team grows to take on the creative challenges of new and existing clients.

“A camel is a horse designed by committee." –Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the Mini.”

Good, strategic communications adds authenticity, allows transparency and helps build trust. If you get this right, it becomes easier when you need to roll out complicated messages, if there’s a specific call to action, or when there’s important changes to be conveyed. Importantly, good pension comms can serve to quietly reassure, and stop pension admin team’s phones from ringing unnecessarily.

Communicating effectively and with consideration to who your audience is, also helps define you as a responsible employer/ trustee board/company/ scheme. It demonstrates how much (or how little) you value and invest in engaging with people. 

How you communicate is so impactful. It should be nuanced (to meet the specific needs of the audience), considered (in its own right, outside of technical requirements) and factored into everything you issue.

It’s great to be part of a team of communicators who also bang the drum for good engagement, and fully understand the brief. After all, we’re safeguarding people’s future incomes, helping them maximise their options, avoid the pitfalls of fraud, make decisions based on what’s right for their personal circumstances, and enjoy the best possible standard of living in retirement. It’s important to get right. 

Helen Taylor, Employee Engagement Consultant, DrumRoll