PLSA seeks to raise workforce reporting standards

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), the trade body for pension funds in the UK, has invited business leaders to meet with pension funds to discuss their reporting of employment models and working practices.

The PLSA chief executive, Julian Mund, wrote a letter to the chairmen of the FTSE 100 companies, saying that pension funds managing £2.2 trillion for UK savers believe that a company’s workforce is critical to its long-term success. Therefore, he said that understanding how a company treats its workforce is critical to pension funds’ decisions about which companies to invest in.

Mind stated in the letter: “It is the PLSA’s aim that these discussions will help UK companies to lead global best practice in relation to workforce disclosure and governance. It is only through working together on this issue that investors and companies can both deliver significant improvements to millions of working lives as well as delivering better returns to investors – and pension scheme members – over the long term.”

Mund’s letter came after a PLSA report published in April, which found that many companies failed to disclose workforce issues such as staff turnover, gender and ethnicity pay gaps, the level of employee share ownership and supply chain ethics beyond the minimum statutory requirements.