The organisation
Woking Borough Council (Woking Council) has a total Local Government Pension Scheme (LPGS) workforce of 401 employees.
They first took advantage of a salary sacrifice Shared Cost Additional Voluntary Contribution (Shared Cost AVC) scheme in December 2021, as they wanted to give their LGPS members access to the best employee benefits and increase overall financial wellbeing.
A salary sacrifice Shared Cost AVC scheme can help LGPS members save for their future, and significantly enhance the quality of their lives at retirement. Many of their employees were oblivious to the significant savings they could be making for their future with the help of this employee benefit.
Lisa Harrington, at Woking Borough Council, is a huge advocate of the scheme and has always been passionate about employee wellbeing. Lisa has dedicated a lot of her time to help roll out the initiative to all LGPS members, and found posting to their employeeonly/closed Facebook group helped hugely with the adoption of the scheme as it enabled employees to fully understand the benefit and remove any confusion.
Objectives
To offer the best employee benefit possible to all LGPS members
Increase awareness of their Shared Cost AVC scheme internally
Increase the number of LGPS members that are registered to their Shared Cost AVC website
December 2021 scheme launched
401 LGPS members
The implementation
Woking Council embarked on a ‘Communications Plan’ which included bespoke, targeted digital based activities, including digital posters, intranet posts, and promotional emails. Targeted communication included email invitations to a 1-to-1 video call meeting with an AVC Wise retirement expert were sent to 401 LGPS members.
In December 2021, AVC Wise hosted three webinar sessions exclusively for Woking’s LGPS members, focussing on two key subjects:
Your LGPS and SCAVCs - An introductory session giving them a basic education of their main scheme LGPS and introducing Shared Cost AVCs 2.
How to retire early and with more money - A session focussed on the benefits of our Shared Cost AVC scheme.
The webinars were promoted via digital posters, banners, intranet posts, newsletter copy and promotional emails. Employees had access to AVC Wise’s ‘always on’ resources including animated explainer videos and a retirement calculator.
“Thanks to AVC Wise’s help with employee communications and their fabulous webinars, employee take up has been strong. Best of all, introducing this scheme hasn’t caused a huge workload for us – AVC Wise have made it so easy” - Lisa Harrington, Woking Borough Council
The results
The launch of their new employee benefit was highly successful which was evident in the figures:
166 Total employee registrations
62 Total accepted plans
21-65 Employee take-up age range
41.4% Total employee registrations vs LGPS members
£20,183 Total accepted employee salary sacrifice
£3,046 Total employer monthly savings
£22,214 Total employer savings since launch
To find out how AVC Wise can help you, your organisation and your employees achieve substantial savings just like Woking Borough Council, contact us now on 01252 959 779.