Electric cars are a hot company perk and the CIPD’s Charles Cotton points out in the FT that it’s easier to sell a job on a new motor than security in later life. This is especially true, if that security no longer comes in the shape of a roadworthy pension vehicle “but a set of parts without an instruction manual” (analogy c/o Cath Donnelly- Herriot Watt)
This has always been the problem with categorising a pension as an “employee benefit” rather than “deferred pay”.
Pensions cannot be compared with company cars (electric or otherwise) , they do a different thing, they insure us against the cost of old age and give us hope as we struggle on that there will be a time when we will have enough coming in to stop work.
A few organisations still believe in this and put pensions at the heart of what they do. I think to Royal Mail who have never compromised on their staff welfare. I think of Terry Pullinger, the CWU’s DG’s comment that he became a postman because postmen got proper pensions. How many people of my age (62), wish they could say the same.
This is not a dig at Charles Cotton, who is a stalwart and a decent man, he was speaking half in jest. However, so long as pensions are relegated to equivalence to cars in a flex-roster, they will fall down the list of perks, as surely as a stone falls through water.
For all the good that auto-enrolment has done, it has failed to re-assert pensions as deferred pay. This is largely down to the focus on workplace pensions shifting to contribution rates, charges and ephemera such as “web-access” – (about as much use to most of us as heated seats in our company car). We know what cars do, we have little idea what our pension saving does – other than to give us a long-term headache over how to spend our money.
We really need to stop making pensions “hard” and return to a concept of pensions making life “easy”. It may not be easy to run a pension fund (which is why pension people are expert and rewarded as such), but it should be easy to be in one and easy to be paid a pension.
This “pensions are hard” nonsense is a construct of those who see “de-risking” as “do it yourself”. Since when did a Tesla come in a flatpack?
A lot of things are easier than pensions, but they don’t pay the bills. Consign pensions to being an employee benefit and you will continue to have flat-pack retirements.
It’s time we made looking forward to our pension as pleasurable as getting into that shiny new electric car.