Hi,
I'm part of the HBOS 3 year sharesave scheme (Halifax/Bank of Scotland). I pay £40 a month for the next three years , get a few months bonus and the option to buy the stock at £5.86 ( current price around £7 and hopefully rising over the next 3 years). If not then I get the money ( includes around 4% pa interest)
I think the main key is diversification. In the UK the company pension funds tend to be more diversified than in the US ( the fund owns stock in a lot more companies and generally has a small percentage of funds in its own company) unlike Enron and a lot of other companies ( I think McDonalds etc- there was a graph in a recent issue of the Economist- I will try to dig it out)
TBS