testimonials.

"We have rolled out a voluntary programme of financial education for our people aged over 50, to help them begin planning for retirement, be it in the short, medium or longer term. It is important to use a specialist education provider who understands not only BT pensions, but who also have a detailed understanding of the wider retirement market to give employees a rounded view of their key options and areas they need to consider. We have worked with WEALTH at work, for a number of years, and they have helped us, not only to put together and deliver highly engaging seminars, but supported this with an online capability to help BT employees through their decision making process. This complements our own pensions modelling tool by giving specialist information about relevant issues such as state benefits and capital investment."

Dennis Gissing – Head of People Practices.

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"The team at WEALTH at work were the key partner in educating our staff in respect of the closure of our DB pension arrangement and key aspects of the new DC plan, how it linked together also with other benefits such as our Share Incentive Plan.

WEALTH at work delivers a quality service as a result of employing specialists for each stage of the process such as marketing expertise to engage employees, educationalists to explain the benefits in a simple way and specialist advisers covering investments, pensions and tax for employees to utilise when they need to."

Sarah Newell – Pensions Manager.

"British American Tobacco have successfully worked with WEALTH at work since 2006. We have just renewed our 3 year programme of education delivered by them. Employee feedback has been very positive showing that our employees value both the information provided and the method of delivery, which enables them to take action to maximise the value of their British American Tobacco benefits and improve overall management and control of their finances."

Catherine Birchall – Human Resources Executive.

"BP selected WEALTH at work after a rigorous tender process because of their proven delivery expertise in providing financial education in the workplace. In addition to financial education, we have used the pension expertise WEALTH at work has to advise employees on their DB pension benefits as part of a major review of our entire benefit offering."

Peter Lay – Communications Manager.

In the first quarter of 2011, BP commissioned WEALTH at work to run a pensions education programme for those employees who were identified as most likely to be impacted by the tax changes.  The aim of the project was to inform and educate these employees on the pension changes announced in October 2010, and the potential impact of these changes.  The education programme involved the delivery of 33 seminars across 4 sites, webinars and webcasts, together with financial guidance clinics and strategic investment advice from WEALTH at work's strategic investment planners.

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"We wanted to get people to better understand their benefits package and what they could do with it."

Deborah Warman, Head of employment relations and reward.

Marks and Spencer (M&S) offers financial education to all staff. It targets its 60,000 –plus store staff through seminars and leaflets in association with the Financial Services Authority’s ‘Money matters’ programme, and its management staff through a partnership with WEALTH at work. The retailer’s head of employment relations and reward, Deborah Warman, says; “Financial education is important to all employees.”

M&S started its financial education programme two years ago with targeted seminars for staff. “We wanted to get people to better understand their benefits package and what they could do with it,” says Warman. Initially, about 100 management staff in long – term incentive plans were targeted through the WEALTH at work programme, followed by 300 more the following year.

“We had such positive feedback, we then started to look at how we ran that more extensively.” says Warman. A further 26 sessions will take place in the next six months. They have already included programmes targeting high earners. Warman says the seminars have had a big impact on staff and are generally oversubscribed. “It has a wider impact than just them understanding their reward programme. It helps them to understand whether to save for the short term or long term. The biggest thing was that this was a personal offer that helped staff and their families. It was not just focused on business training.

“It is hard to quantity factually, but the softer side would suggest it has definitely hit the mark.” The programme has also helped retention, says Warman. “If you look at what it costs to recruit and get someone through the door, if you can retain someone simply by explaining their pay and benefits package, then it pays back.”

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