EPN575 – Find It Fast in the new Employer and Member help centres

Date posted: 01/04/2019

Audience

This EPN is for all employers, specifically:

Pension leads
HR managers
Staff who submit requests for member services to the Scheme Administrator (MyCSP)
Staff managing a shared service or payroll provider
Civil Service pension scheme members in your employment

Summary

We have launched two brand new help centres on our website, designed to help employers and members find Civil Service Pensions information and useful resources, like forms and guides, quickly and easily.

Actions

Familiarise yourself with the Employer Help Centre, so that in future you can use it in the first instance to answer any questions you have about our processes, your responsibilities, or when seeking general guidance.
Promote the launch of the Member Help Centre (using the collateral pack attached to this EPN) to all Civil Service pension scheme members in your employment.
(Although we do not expect that users will encounter any problems accessing the help centres) if they do, you will need to ask your IT team to add the help centre URLs to a “whitelist”.

Timing

Immediately

Detail

1. The new employer and member help centres launched on 1 April.

2. The help centres use a search engine that understands how people ask questions and can predict what a user is about to ask or might need. This means that the help centres will improve through continued use by clustering knowledge together, making finding things even quicker and easier.

3. The help centres can be accessed from our website. From the homepage, simply click into the employer or member section, where you will see a link to the respective help centre.

4. Once in the help centre, you can find information by simply asking it a question or by typing a relevant phrase in the search bar. The help centre also has a number of common categories and frequently asked questions to find information instantly.

5. We are keen that you familiarise yourself with the Employer Help Centre, and adopt it as the ‘go to’ place for Civil Service Pensions information.

6. To begin with, the help centres will contain information about key aspects of the Civil Service pension scheme. However, we will continue to develop and add more content to both help centres based on user feedback.

7. The Member Help Centre currently contains information about retirements, annual events, and bereavements. Whilst the Employer Help Centre contains a fully updated Employer Pension Guide (EPG).

8. We have produced a collateral pack (See Annex’s) you can use to promote the Member Help Centre to scheme members in your organisation. The pack contains posters for your notice boards, a widescreen digital screen saver for desktops and digital displays, and email footer.

9. If you are attending the spring Regional Employer Forums (REFs) in April 2019, we will also be holding a live demonstration of the help centres then so you can find out more.

Contacts

If you require further assistance on the content of this EPN, please contact the Programme Manager for this initiative Rob.Hughes@mycsp.co.uk

If you have a question about the distribution of EPNs contact employerpensionnotice@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.

You can find electronic copies of the Employer Pension Guide, all current EPNs and forms on the Civil Service Pension Scheme website.

This notice is for employers and should not be issued to scheme members.

If members have a question about their pension, they can find information on the Civil Service Pension Scheme website or by contacting the Scheme Administrator (MyCSP).