What Centrica learned about getting employees to engage with financial wellbeing

“Keep it simple.” This was the message Ross Dunlop, Reward Director at Centrica, returned to repeatedly during his conversation with Standard Life’s Jess Kelvin at the Energise customer forum we hosted in London in May.

For many employers, financial wellbeing remains a challenge. The benefits are there, the communications are going out, and the tools are available. Yet getting employees to engage – and take action – is often another matter entirely.

Centrica’s experience shows that the answer isn’t necessarily more content, more campaigns or more technology. Sometimes it’s about stripping things back.

Employees aren’t avoiding the conversation

One of the more interesting points Ross raised was the assumption that employees don’t want to engage with pensions or financial planning.

His experience suggests otherwise. Whether speaking to engineers, apprentices or customer service colleagues, Ross has found people are often interested in understanding their pension and wider finances. What they don’t want is complexity.

“They value the pension, but they’ve been almost waiting for months to ask the question,” states Ross.

Often, employees simply need an opportunity to ask the questions they’ve been carrying around for a while. That insight has shaped Centrica’s approach to engagement.

Take the conversation to employees

With more than 20,000 colleagues across the UK, including thousands of frontline engineers, Centrica couldn’t rely on people finding pension information for themselves. Instead, the team focused on meeting employees where they already were.

That meant bringing pension and savings conversations into existing events, visiting engineer gatherings and creating opportunities for face-to-face discussions. The result wasn’t just higher engagement but also better quality engagement.

Employees who may never have logged into a pension portal were suddenly asking questions, sharing experiences and talking to colleagues about benefits they hadn’t fully understood before.

Simple messages work

Ross shared one example that proved particularly effective: rather than explaining pension tax relief, contribution structures and investment growth, Centrica focused on a straightforward message about the value of employer contributions.

“You give us a fiver, we’ll give you £1.40 change and we’ll throw in another tenner.”

The numbers aren’t the point. The simplicity is. Too often, pensions are presented as something complicated and distant. Centrica’s approach was to focus on the immediate value employees were receiving and make that easy to understand.

Financial wellbeing starts long before retirement

The discussion also highlighted why financial wellbeing can’t be viewed purely through the lens of pensions. As Ross pointed out, it’s difficult to talk to someone about retirement decades away if they’re worrying about today’s bills, saving for a home or supporting their family.

That’s why Centrica’s approach spans short-term savings, share schemes, workplace benefits and pensions. The goal isn’t to drive engagement with a single product. It’s to help employees build financial resilience over time.

Leadership matters

Another lesson from Centrica’s experience is that financial wellbeing works best when it isn’t seen as an HR initiative. Ross spoke about the importance of embedding the message throughout the organization, with leaders helping employees understand why benefits exist and the role they play in supporting people’s lives.

The challenge now is ensuring that message runs consistently through the business, rather than sitting solely within reward and benefits teams.

The work is never finished

Despite strong engagement figures, Ross was quick to point out that Centrica doesn’t consider the job done. Employee needs change, workforces evolve, and new generations arrive with different expectations and different influences.

One example that stuck with the audience was Ross’s conversation with a graduate who was weighing up whether to invest in crypto or NFTs.

It was a reminder that employees are getting financial information from more places than ever before. Employers have an opportunity – and arguably a responsibility – to be a trusted source of clear, balanced information.

One piece of advice for employers?

Ross’s answer was immediate: “Focus on one thing. Keep it simple. Make it fun.”

For organizations looking to improve financial wellbeing engagement, that might be the most useful takeaway of all.

Watch the session on demand

Want to hear the full conversation? Watch Ross Dunlop from Centrica and Jess Kelvin from Standard Life discuss pension engagement, financial wellbeing and employee communications on demand: How Centrica and Standard Life use workplace benefits to drive engagement and better financial wellbeing.