Something for nothing?. Employees’ views of occupational pension schemes
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450010332532 |
| Pages | 260-271 |
| Published date | 01 June 2000 |
| Date | 01 June 2000 |
| Author | Wendy Loretto,Phil White,Colin Duncan |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
22,3
260
Employee Relations,
Vol. 22 No. 3, 2000, pp. 260-271.
#MCB University Press, 0142-5455
Something for nothing?
Employees' views of occupational
pension schemes
Wendy Loretto, Phil White and Colin Duncan
The University of Edinburgh, UK
Keywords Pensions, Employees, Recruitment, Retention, Motivation, Financial services
Abstract Against a background of partial, and often contradictory, information, this article
explores the attitudes of over 1,000 employees in one firm in the financial services sector towards
various issues related to retirement and pensions. The respondents regarded the existence of
occupational pension schemes as having a major influence on their job searches. Among the
various reasons for being members of the employer's scheme, the principal ones were associated
with the perceived qualities of the scheme itself, the zero charge for employees, and opportunities
for planning for the future. Levels of ignorance about certain features of the scheme were
discernible, and differentiated patterns of response among groupings of employees suggested that
employees bring to pensions matters diverse expectations and awareness. The article concludes
with a discussion of the implications of these findings for employee recruitment, motivation and
retention.
Introduction
As is attested by this special issue, the inter-related topics of retirement and
pensions have received increasing attention in the UK in recent years.
Although occupational pension schemes are only one of the three prime sources
of income for retired people in the UK, it is argued that they merit particular
attention for several reasons. First, the coverage of occupational pension
schemes, provided by employers, is widespread: from the late 1960s until the
early 1990s, the proportion of employees who were members of an occupational
scheme varied between 48 per cent and 53 per cent (Pensions Provision Group
(PPG), 1998), a coverage that could be said to be even more worthy of note
given that employers have been under no statutory obligation to provide
schemes for their employees. While personal pensions have gained some
currency over recent years ± according to one measure, well over 5 million
people have a personal pension arrangement (PPG, 1998) ± around 46 per cent
of employees remain members of occupational schemes (PPG, 1998). Moreover
the third source of retirement income, the State Old Age Pension, first
introduced in 1908, has for the past two decades been on an ineluctably
downward path, both in this country and elsewhere (Boldrin et al., 1999).
Second, the provision of occupation pensions represents a significant cost to
employers. According to a recent review of benefits provision surveys, benefit
expenditure (of which pensions represent a significant proportion) can
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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The authors would like to thank the staff of Finserv for their assistance with this project.
Special thanks are due to Aileen Deas, Fiona Lawson and Deborah Proctor. The assistance
provided by Jake Ansell, Andy Adams and Katharine Angus is also gratefully acknowledged.
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