Yes. You can delay auto enrolment for some or all your workers by up to three months. This is known as postponement.
You can only postpone auto enrolment from:
- your duties start date
- a worker’s first day of employment
- the date a worker first becomes eligible for auto enrolment
Why postpone?
This could be useful if you have staff on short-term or temporary contracts who won’t still be working for you after three months, or workers who are still in their probationary period.
Or, you could line your auto enrolment dates up with your company accounting and payroll periods.
The date you postpone to is known as your deferral date.
Postponing auto enrolment doesn’t affect your duties start date.
What you must tell your workers
You must tell all your workers you’re postponing assessing them for auto enrolment and what the deferral date is. You must do this within six weeks from the date after postponement starts.
You must also tell your workers they have the right to ask to be put into a pension before the deferral date. If any of your workers do ask you to put them into a pension before the deferral date, you must enrol them.
Please note that it is not possible to use postponement in connection with automatic re-enrolment.