A survey of working age adults has found that almost three quarters of the population are aware of auto-enrolment and almost half agreed that saving into a workplace pension is “the normal thing to do”.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, also found that 78 per cent of people believe employers being compelled by law to auto-enrol their workers is a good thing.
By 2018, all UK employers will be obliged to offer a workplace pension scheme and automatically enrol qualifying staff.
Last week the legislation marked the milestone of 4m people being brought into workplace pension schemes.
This follows an advertising push to encourage people to save more for the future, which has seen three in 10 working age people taking action as a result of seeing the adverts, with around a quarter having talked about workplace pensions with friends, family or colleagues sometime in the past 12 months.
Steve Webb, pensions minister, said the results showed encouraging progress but also demonstrated there is more to do on conveying the importance of long-term saving to British workers.
He said: “Recent DWP research found that close to half of working age people are failing to save enough to maintain their standard of living into old age, so there is more to do.
“The fact is that almost everybody who has the chance to enrol into a workplace pension would benefit in the long run from doing so – we really do need to be evangelical about spreading that message.”
