how common is it for employers not to contribute anything to pension scheme?

[MizZan]

just transferred to the UK with the company I was working for overseas, and was unpleasantly surprised to discover that this mid-sized and otherwise reputable professional services company does not contribute anything to employee pension schemes.

Well - not quite nothing - we are given the option of using salary sacrifice to contribute to some kind of scheme the company is linked into, and if we do this, the company will then contribute to it the amount they would otherwise have had to pay in national insurance on the amount of the salary sacrifice. So in other words, if I contribute £100 a month to the scheme, as salary sacrifice, they will contribute £11 a month to it, or thereabouts, which is so small as to be not worth anything, especially since taking it as salary sacrifice apparently means that raises, bonus, life insurance, maternity pay etc. are then all calculated using the reduced base salary instead of the original one (as if that £100 was never part of my monthly salary in the first place.)

This seems outrageous to me - Is this very common? Are civil service jobs really the only ones with decent pensions in the UK?

I have been employed by the same UK company for nearly 8 years. We are a med sized company and they do not offer any pension scheme or advice whatstoever.
Its quite common.

Unfortunately becoming more common, and also common for companies with previously fairly generous schemes to first close them to new staff and then remove them altogether.

Pensions schemes are extremely expensive and becoming more so now that we have an ageing population, so, particularly in this economic climate, you are far less likely to find generous pension schemes, or indeed any contribution at all, in the private sector.

If you want a secure and generous pension, public sector is the way to go.

I work in the industry and have never come across a company that bases life cover etc on the salary after salary sacrifice - it is always based on gross salary before the salsac, because as I understand it employees/pension fund members can't be made worse off through the introduction of the salsac arrangement? So might be worth checking that.

As for them not contributing, well that is a bit mean!