In May 1999, as part of our plans to improve the service we provide for our customers, we set up two focus groups, one representing current members the other, pensioners and dependants. More recently we have added an editorial group and this year a brand new focus group representing our members who leave the scheme before retirement age (deferred members).

The role of the focus groups is to provide us with feedback on a wide variety of the things we are planning to do before we do them. For instance we have asked for opinions on service standards, online services, correspondence by email and text messaging. We also consult about revisions to our publicity material and issue draft versions of our newsletters for comment prior to production. Although it didn’t start out that way back in 1999, consultation is conducted now almost entirely by email. It ensures a speedy issue and response time and is a cost effective way of doing things. Membership of the focus groups is limited to 200 members for each group but we are often under that number and always looking to attract new members so if you’re interested please apply*. Although we consult on many issues your actual time commitment is relatively low with many of the issues taking up only minutes of your time.

The Editorial Group is slightly different in that it provides a steer on the content and direction of our Retirement Insight pensioner and dependant’s newsletter. This is a small group consisting of a maximum of six pensioner members who in addition to receiving pre-production newsletters also meet twice a year at our office here in Barnsley. At the meeting the group discuss issues relating to the current newsletter and also bring forward ideas for articles and presentation suggestions. Lunch is provided at the meeting and travel costs reimbursed. Being a much smaller group we are sometimes at full capacity but if you are interested in joining please don’t let this put you off as we can add you to our reserve list and vacancies occur more often than you would think.

If you would like to become a member of one of our focus groups please complete the form by clicking the link on the left and select the group you would like to join. We ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself and why you would like to join your chosen group but this only needs to be a few lines to give us a feel for where your background will be of use to us.

*Being the newest focus group we could do with quite a lot of applicants for the deferred member group.