Transcending language barriers with interactive video statements

The Gwynedd Pension Fund is a local government pension scheme (LGPS) that provides retirement benefits for employees of local authorities and other participating employers in the Gwynedd, Conwy, and Anglesey areas.

The fund is administered by an in-house team of twenty four and serves over 48,000 members.

“For a member with no pension experience, Video Engage makes everything clearer – in a couple of minutes they get basic information about the scheme, how it works and the figures, without jargon. Before, they had something in the post that was too complicated to understand and members often buried their head in the sand.

Video Engage makes it more engaging for them to understand their pension and what it will be worth in the future. 

They’ve got time to look at their contributions and pension pots now, rather than leaving it too late and being shocked or disappointed in the future.”

“The Welsh Language Act 1993 requires public bodies in Wales to treat Welsh and English languages equally. 

Of the eight Welsh local government pension funds, Gwynedd have the most Welsh-speaking members and we have a personal passion to ensure that bilingual language options are available. We were keen to be the first Welsh fund to adopt this in Video Engage and ensure that the Welsh version is as best as it can be. The project to implement the changes was very slick.

Heywood had the text translated and shared a prototype for us to review. We identified areas to work on, such as correcting some sentence construction or voiceover pronunciations. Heywood did the work on that to get it how we wanted.

The process was seamless, with an initial call and then iterative email updates. Bi-weekly sprint reviews were useful and gave us the chance to give input into future product enhancements, too.”