By Lisa Picardo, Chief Business Officer UK, PensionBee
Every woman I know is spinning plates. Paid work. Unpaid care. Financial admin. Life admin. It’s a never-ending “juggle struggle” – fuelled more by instinct and necessity than by applause or recognition.
And it’s exactly this kind of unpaid, unrecognised labour that inspired PensionBee’s recent campaign to shine a spotlight on Britain’s “invisible workers” – those doing the essential caring jobs that society too often overlooks and undervalues.
For too long, this quiet army of carers has not only been left out of the paid workforce, but also the pension system. And unsurprisingly, it’s women – mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters – who bear the brunt. It’s something I’ve experienced in my own life, and it’s a challenge I see reflected across the thousands of customer journeys we support at PensionBee every day.
The invisible workforce: hiding in plain sight
There are over 5 million unpaid carers in the UK. They care for children, elderly parents, partners and relatives, often around the clock and for no pay. This group includes mothers on extended parental leave, women reducing their hours to provide childcare, or daughters leaving careers behind to care for ageing parents. They are the unsung heroes, the glue holding families – and the economy – together.
And yet, when it comes to financial planning and pensions, these invisible workers barely register. They don’t appear in most datasets. They don’t benefit from auto-enrolment. And they often don’t see themselves as eligible for pensions at all.
That’s why PensionBee conducted new research earlier this year to better understand who these invisible workers are, how they engage (or don’t engage) with pensions, and what the industry can do to support them. The findings were stark.
When pensions fall through the cracks
According to our research, just 25% of unpaid carers are currently saving into a pension. That means the vast majority of these women (and yes, most are women) are at risk of reaching retirement with little or no private pension savings.
Many didn’t know they could still pay into a pension while not working. Others believed they earned too little to contribute or assumed it wasn’t worth the effort. And nearly half said they felt “excluded” by the current pension system altogether.
But this isn’t a case of carelessness, it’s a systemic failure. The pension system, designed decades ago, was built for a traditional full-time worker – someone with a continuous, upward career trajectory – and latterly with the advent of auto-enrolment, someone enjoying traditional employment. It was never designed with career breaks, part-time work, or caring responsibilities in mind.
When I stepped away from work
I know this story well because I’ve lived it too. After my second child was born, I left a corporate role in finance to raise my young children and build a business, juggling day and night. But in doing so, I walked straight into a pension gap. No auto-enrolment. No employer contributions. No simple option to set up a personal pension. And, as I focused every ounce of energy on my family and my startup, my pension naturally fell off the list completely. Years of missed contributions that it’s hard to ever catch-up on. Like so many women, I was investing in the future – just not my future.
Looking back, I realise just how easy it was to slip through the cracks. Not because I didn’t care, but because the system’s safety net didn’t work well enough to make saving easy or obvious. The experience stuck with me. So when I joined PensionBee, I made it my mission to make pensions work for people like me – and for the countless other women quietly holding society together.
What needs to change
We launched the Invisible Workers campaign to make these stories visible, and to push for three critical changes across the pension landscape.
Recognising unpaid carers as valid pension contributors. You don’t need to be in full-time paid employment to have a future worth saving for. We need to do far more to help unpaid carers understand that they can – and should – still be contributing to a pension, even if they’re not working or earning much. We need to raise awareness.
Simplifying and digitising access to personal pensions. When life is already exhausting, setting up a pension shouldn’t feel like one more impossible task. That’s why we’ve designed the PensionBee platform to be mobile-first, jargon-free and frictionless, with tools and content that address the challenges faced by these customers. But the wider industry needs to step up too. Providers should be working harder to speak to and support carers – offering intuitive tools, helpful support and content that speaks to their lived reality.
Fixing the policy gap. Auto-enrolment has been hugely successful, but it still excludes millions of part-time workers, many of whom are women juggling multiple jobs or caring roles. Lowering the earnings threshold to make it more inclusive or expanding it for the self-employed – would make a meaningful difference.
The business case for caring
Some might argue that pension policy reform is a political issue. But I believe it’s a business, economic and societal issue too. Because women who can’t save for the future are women who may never reach their full economic potential.
Financial insecurity later in life doesn’t just impact individual households – it burdens the entire system. If we want thriving businesses and sustainable communities, we need to value care work and ensure those doing it are supported to save for the future.
We’re proud to support flexible contributions, spousal top-ups, and other features that make it easier for unpaid carers to start, pause and restart their saving journey. It’s perhaps one of the reasons why over 40% of our customers in 2024 were women – a figure that’s significantly higher than the industry average.
Why this matters to women in business
Many of us in the Women in Business Network are juggling care roles of our own. Whether you’re raising children, caring for/supporting a partner, or looking after elderly relatives, or some combination of all three, you’ll know how unpaid labour shapes your day, your flexibility and the choices you make.
But even beyond our personal experience, we have a collective responsibility as leaders, founders and executives to advocate for systems that support all women – not just those currently in full-time paid work.
We can start by speaking openly about the pension gap, by sharing our own stories of disengagement and discovery, and by encouraging the invisible workers in our lives — friends, family, colleagues – to take simple steps toward saving.
Let’s stop making women choose
No woman should have to choose between being present for her family and being prepared for her retirement. And no woman should reach pension age wondering why her care work — so essential to society – counted for so little financially.
It’s time we reimagined what the pension system is for. It should protect not just the people who earn the most, but those who work the most and give the most back. Because building a fairer future means valuing the work that happens behind the scenes, unpaid and often unnoticed.
Let’s start seeing invisible workers for who they really are: the backbone of our families, our communities, and our economy. Let’s build a system that sees them too.
