I am sitting in on a call with Jo Churchill MP , Andy Briggs, Phoenix CEO , Catherine Foot of Phoenix Insights and  a lady from Sara Thompson from Phoenix’s HR team.

Everyone on the panel – other than the Minister, is on Phoenix’s payroll and everyone, apart from Jo Churchill , have jobs that are paid for by revenues from Phoenix’s customers. Jo has only just arrived in post, replacing Guy Opperman, a fervent champion of Midlife MOTs.

The danger of these sessions is that they lose an external perspective and preach from the converted. It is not hard to see reasons for Phoenix employees giving positive feedback on Midlife MOTs. She mentioned she’d had one herself.

Mention was made of the 99% of the British companies that are SMEs (and aren’t financial behemoths), mention was made of B&Q. But it’s from the “large and enlightened” businesses like Phoenix and Aviva that the support for Midlife MOTs chiefly comes.

I was keen to understand what benefit there is from midlife MOTs beyond improving workplace pension savings.

There were a number of questions in the chat but the ones I wanted answering weren’t asked.

The Q&A from those not on the panel appear to be moderated (in bold) but I’m not sure that these questions were addressed.

Anonymous Attendee 10:21 AM
It is wonderful to hear about your “magical experience” with colleagues Catherine but significant numbers of the workforce are not employed by such enlightened employers, many on zero hours contracts have already had to pull back from pension payments in order to put food on their table and stay warm.
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Anonymous Attendee 10:21 AM
Catherine, you described MLMOT as an intervention. This doesn’t seem right because there is no attempt to “intervene” and proactively bring people to the MLMOT (as policy does through auto-enrolment to bring people into pensions). Most people don’t work for the types of generous large employers like Phoenix who offer MLMOTs to staff. What are your views on what should be done to increase take up of MLMOT, advice and guidance, and ensuring savers use at least one of these to help with retirement planning?
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The feedback from Phoenix staff who moaned about the Midlife MOT , was that there weren’t enough spaces on the Midlife MOTs. This kind of answered another anonymous question

Anonymous Attendee 10:22 AM
Q for Minister – when will DWP publish the MLMOT pilot evaluations? This could be really useful analysis for businesses.
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Catherine Foot claimed on the call that these questions were all about how we can expand the Midlife MOTs, but these questions were rightly focussing on whether the people (other than the panellists) who attended, found these things of lasting value.

I am focussing on these anonymous questions and not the questions asked personally which appear to be signalling the virtue of Midlife MOT’s.

The title of this session is

Lessons from introducing Midlife MOTs

The lessons to be learned appear to be about working and saving longer and harder . From the HR perspective, it’s about retaining staff but slightly more sinisterly –  to use the Minister’s word , MOTs are almost an “appraisal” of staff. This may be an intervention too far for people in their fifties!

The real world issues for the over 50’s seem to stretch beyond “saving for retirement” or working longer and harder for the employer.

Jo Garsden 10:40 AM
In Greater Manchester, we find that many older people aren’t aware of all the support and offers available to those of State Pension Age (e.g. Attendance Allowance, Carer’s Allowance, concessionary bus pass, free NHS eye tests, support for carers, winter fuel payment, warm homes discount scheme). It would be great if this wider information could be shared as part of the mid life MOT.

This question did get answered by the Minister who thought Jo was  focussing on the 26% of the inactive and not in  the workforce. I suspect that many older workers have issues like this but are not the valued employees who are likely to be targeted by employers to be retained.

The Minister  says she “valued every worker” but it’s their skills  she says she values. Do the inactive not have value to the minister of employment?

Many older people struggle to demonstrate skills that make them productive, struggle to work and struggle to save from salary . I fear that the Midlife MOT will not empower such people but will foster the sense of inadequacy that forces many in the workforce to give up.

Really what “older workers” want from work is the dignity that they feel they lose as (to use Andy Briggs’ great phrase) , their “bodies start making funny noises”. People do not want to be appraised , they do want help on non-workplace benefits and we don’t seem to be getting the feedback, either from the DWP or from employers about how MOTs are going down.

The Minister asked for the comments to be sent through to her, I hope that she gets this blog too!