Occupational pension tools in times of demographic change

The average workforce age is on the rise, with a shortage of skilled workers already clearly evident in many sectors. Company pension programs and flexible working hours models provide key incentives to help companies hold their own in the battle to attract the best talents. At the same time, they play an important role in securing the future of employees. From a technical perspective, the legal framework for company retirement provision is demanding. Volume no. 2 from the ddn „DemographieManagement kompakt“ (Demographics Management compact) series provides analyses, assessments of the status quo and solution models regarding this topic. „The changing working world means that employees have to be more flexible and make their own decisions. Within this context, it is shocking just how little importance is attached to company retirement provision: one in ten employees does not even know whether they have a company pension or not. Out of those who think they do have company retirement provision, two-thirds do not know how much they and/or their employer pay in, and, as a result, have no idea what their resulting entitlements will be. Company retirement provision is therefore up against a huge challenge: on the one hand, its advantage lies in being able to make collective decisions, thus helping individuals to make difficult financial decisions, or even relieving them of this burden entirely. On the other hand, decisionmakers have to find ways of making their actions transparent. This book shows just how gripping a difficult subject like this one can be. In fact, the difficulty of the subject matter is perhaps what makes it so gripping. “ Prof. Dr. Axel Börsch-Supan Munich Center for the Economics of Aging of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy