How your company should prepare for Automatic Enrolment
Auto-enrolment, the process of putting your employees into a workplace pension scheme, must be undertaken by all UK businesses employing staff.
A compulsory pension scheme is regarded widely as a positive thing, with the effect of implementation costs on smaller companies being offset by the benefits afforded to staff of saving for the future.
But there is evidence to suggest that many small and medium-sized companies are not prepared for the complexities of setting up employer pension schemes.
Earlier this year, a study by the Federation of Small Businesses showed that 45 per cent of small companies are confused about auto-enrolment rules obliging them to enrol employees in a qualifying workplace pension scheme.
With more than 500,000 employers due to stage in 2016 alone, this is concerning. Clearly, small businesses still need a fair amount of guidance on what auto-enrolment actually entails.
In this guide, we speak to small companies about preparing for their staging date, to see how they managed. From the horse’s mouth, they offer procedural guidance on a process that many business owners are mistakenly not placing at the head of their priority list.