Employers Employers' responsibilities
You’ll need to set up a workplace pension and auto enrol your eligible workers who qualify. We have lots of resources to help you do this.
Understanding salary sacrifice See frequently asked questions
From assessing and enrolling workers and processing contributions correctly, to sending communications by the deadlines and reporting to The Pensions Regulator – we explain your legal duties.
Our range of flexible contribution models enable you to set contribution rates that suit the needs of your business, from the minimum required to more generous levels.
There are two ways workers can stop paying in to your workplace pension – ‘opting out’ and ‘ceasing active membership’ (these rules are set by the government and enforced by The Pensions Regulator). We explain what’s involved and how you can help your workers.
Salary sacrifice can be a tax-efficient way to arrange contributions to your workplace pension. It means you and your workers pay lower National Insurance contributions, although it may not be suitable for all your workers. Follow the link to find out more.
Pay As You Earn (PAYE) is HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)’s system for collecting income tax and National Insurance contributions. Learn about your responsibilities and how to report workers’ payments with PAYE.
Frequently asked questions
See all support for employersYou must set up a workplace pension as soon as you employ someone – even if it’s only one person. This is the date from which your legal duties under auto enrolment apply, known as your duties start date.
To meet the The Pensions Regulator’s requirements, you must tell them that you’ve met your auto enrolment duties by submitting a declaration of compliance within five months of your duties start date.
Important: this question doesn’t apply to you if you’ve asked now:pensions to send auto enrolment statutory communications to your workers for you. You won’t see this section when you’re uploading pension data files.
This question only applies to you if you send enrolment notices to your workers yourself. To learn more about this, visit our guide.
Your participation agreement is the contract between your workplace and now:pensions. This agreement sets out the terms of your participation in the scheme, including the charges you pay as a workplace, your agreed payment schedule, the services we provide and the charges your members pay for us to manage their pension savings.
It also explains your responsibilities, such as supplying accurate payroll data, making timely contributions and providing up to date contact details for both your organisation and your workers.
If you have any questions about how it works, please contact us.
By law, you must tell each worker they’ve been assessed for auto enrolment into a workplace pension and explain how they’ll be affected by auto enrolment, including their choices and what they need to do. You must send them the right statutory communications (assessment, enrolment and postponement letters) within six weeks of the relevant assessment date.
These duties aren’t one-off. You must continue to assess new and existing workers regularly (e.g. when they become eligible) and send workers the relevant statutory communications.
Subject to any statutory exceptions that apply, every three years you must re-enrol eligible workers who have previously opted out and send out the appropriate letters. If you don’t tell your workers the right things by the correct deadlines, you risk not meeting your auto enrolment duties.
You can ask us to manage your statutory communications and we’ll send these for you.
No. Encouraging workers to opt out of your workplace pension is called ‘inducement’ and it’s against the law. The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has the power to take legal and enforcement action if you’re found to be offering inducements to your workers. This could include fines or even prosecution in serious cases.
We take our responsibility to protect members seriously. If we suspect any attempt of inducement, we will report it to TPR.
Read more about this on The Pension Regulator’s website.