Maureen Maloney is an adjunct Management lecturer at the University of Galway. She recently completed a PhD looking for a connection between an organisation’s pension communication about their pension plan and pension understanding. Data was collected from three medium- and one large-sized case study organisations. She found that in spite of considerable variations in pension communications, employee understanding of their organsation’s pension plan was relatively poor, particularly at the three medium-sized organisations. Based on her analysis of DC plan structure and communication, she concluded that they are beyond the cognitive capacity of most employees.
Auto-enrolment has the potential to be a better financial product than organisation-based DC plans, both in design and communication. However, the research from DC plans, provides insights about the potential benefits of simple structure and communication that assists employees to make reasoned decisions.