Tarmac employees get on board the pensions bus

Team from Scottish Widows and the Pension Geeks share useful information on pensions and retirement

TARMAC employees at the company’s Solihull headquarters have kicked off a nationwide focus on pension awareness, with a visit from Scottish Widows and the Pension Awareness Day tour bus.

The event is part of a wider campaign by Tarmac to support their employees in planning for retirement and actively managing their pensions.

A team of experts from Scottish Widows – Tarmac’s main pension provider – together with the Pension Geeks were on site on 25 September to share advice and useful information on pensions.

On board – in addition to the experts answering employees’ pension questions – there was a range of fun activities, including giveaways and interactive games, all of which were aimed at helping people get to grips with their future retirement plans.

James Roberts, head of employee benefits at Tarmac, said: ‘We’re absolutely committed to supporting employees in planning for their retirement and making their pensions work as hard as possible. A lot of people can find pensions a bit complicated and ‘scary’, and so don’t always pay as much attention to them as they would their bank accounts.

‘We’re putting a range of services in place to support colleagues in making educated decisions about their pension savings. The visit from Scottish Widows is part of our approach, and we’d like to thank them for spending the day with us.’

Robert Cochran, senior corporate pensions specialist at Scottish Widows, said: ‘Through this tour, we want to help people find out what action they need to take to achieve the happy retirement they want. We’re looking forward speaking with more Tarmac colleagues as we visit a number of the company’s offices across the UK.’

Jonathan Bland, ‘head nerd’ at Pension Geeks, added: ‘A few years ago I didn’t have a clue about my pension, or indeed pensions in general – it led me to think there must be thousands more people in the same boat.

‘That’s why we started doing this and we’ve really enjoyed being here at Tarmac’s offices and helping their employees too. We want to plug that knowledge gap and get people to understand how it all works to help them to be better prepared for retirement.’