Nadine remained standing during the interview. Not at a fashionable adjustable desk, which you sometimes see when you meet with someone via Teams or Zoom, but at a dresser with a toy giraffe in the background. “My baby is seven months old now and I've got a three-year-old toddler as well. When they're older, we hope to be able to see some real giraffes in the wild with them, but we know exciting vacations won’t be possible for a while.”

The link with ‘later’ was quickly made. After all, the topic of our conversation was pension. It's a topic that keeps Nadine occupied professionally. She’s been working as an HR communication specialist at NN since 2018.

“My job is to ensure NN's HR policies are communicated to all employees. Pension is one of those topics. I studied communication sciences, but the interesting thing is that I’m now learning about HR-related topics. I wasn't trained in this field at all, but I enjoy sparring about the communications with the experts. So I’m becoming a bit of an HR expert as well.”

I ask the right questions
“I’m certainly not a pension expert,though,’ Nadine laughed. ‘I learned more about this subject so I’d be able to communicate about the new pension agreement, which was signed in 2019. I know what's going on, but not all the details. I think that's why specialists are comfortable working with me. I ask the right questions. You see, before you know it they start using professional jargon and making complicated calculations. That's when I can ask them, ‘What exactly do you mean?’, or ‘How much will that cost me?’. These are things the average employee wants to know, so our communications are written from that perspective.”

The gardener had the ugliest garden
“The inevitable question is, of course, what I know about my own pension. To be quite honest, I haven't given it much thought yet. I’m 31 now, and I might be 70 by the time I retire. That's 39 years from now, longer than my entire life up to now. I do keep telling myself I should take a closer look at my pension, because if I need to set aside savings for later I should probably start doing that now. But we might want to move to a larger house this year, and that will certainly empty my savings account.

I used to live next to a gardener, and I still think of him sometimes. His garden was the ugliest one in the neighbourhood. I compare myself to him – I should do more about my pension. Most people my age probably feel the same way. Life itself takes all your energy and you want to spend your savings on lovely and important things, like a new house – which is also a good investment, of course. So I do think about later, but not in terms of the ins and outs of my pension plan.”

Making it easier
“What I enjoy doing is making difficult topics easier to understand. Pension is really hard to grasp. Just think: how does surviving dependants’ pension work? You’ll never find me poring over accounts to figure out the numbers. I’m no bookkeeper, but I certainly enjoy making difficult topics easier to understand. Pension is a topic many people find irrelevant and they only become interested when their retirement comes close – but that could be too late. Sure… I know how to explain these things to others.”

Personal approach is key
“A truly successful pension communication project? What comes to mind is our project in 2019, when our surviving dependants’ pension, which had always been accrual-based, was turned into a risk-based pension. We created several different characters and made a magazine with personal stories describing how the change would affect them. That was a success. We used stories instead of plain explanations. Readers could click on the character that matched their own situation for more information. When you're young, it can be hard to relate to a story about someone who’s 58 , but surviving dependants’ pension is relevant to someone my age too.” 

Taking good care of your family
“I think it's good for younger people to know that they don't need to study all the details of their pension. You can look into elements of it. That's how we provide the information nowadays – in small chunks. We do that because it makes it easier and more interesting. So you can learn about your pension as you go through major steps in your life. Like when you buy a house and need to sort out your finances. And when you have a baby and need to balance the cost of daycare with the number of hours you’ll want to work. Your pension probably isn’t the first thing on your mind when you're starting a family, and surviving dependants’ pension doesn’t exactly trigger you into action. But you do want to take good care of your family – even if things go wrong somewhere down the line. In fact, in a good relationship, you need to make arrangements just in case you get divorced. But who thinks of that in advance ...?”