Employers When workers stop paying in

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.

What do you need to do? See frequently asked questions

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How workers can stop paying in

Within one month

If a worker asks to stop paying in to their pension savings within the first calendar month of being enrolled, this is ‘opting out’. They can log in to now:u to do this.

You’ll get an email headed ‘Changes from your workers’ in your now:u mailbox, telling you they’ve asked to opt out. You’ll also see recent worker actions, including opt-outs, in now:u when you start uploading a pension data file.

When a worker asks to opt out you must:

  • stop paying in to their pension savings
  • refund any contributions they’ve already paid, and
  • treat them as if they’d never been enrolled into your workplace pension.

After one month

After one calendar month has passed, workers can still stop paying in, but you can’t refund their contributions. This is ‘ceasing active membership’. Their pension savings will stay invested until they retire or transfer them out.

You may have to re-enrol opted out workers

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Re-enrolment

If a worker opts out, it’s likely you’ll need to re-enrol them in the future.

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Legal duties

Every three years you must check whether you have any workers who qualify to be auto enrolled, but who aren’t in your workplace pension. This is a legal requirement.

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Workers who qualify

If you find any workers who qualify you must, by law, re-enrol them. The workers can stop paying in again if they choose to.

Opting back in

Workers can opt back in at any time. They can ask you to put them back into your workplace pension, or log in to now:u and choose Start saving. Your contributions will restart and so will theirs.

Learn more about managing your workplace pension

Frequently asked questions

See all support for employers

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. 

To learn more about this, visit our section on how they can stop paying in, and what you’ll need to do.

Once you’ve chosen your re-enrolment date, we’ll send you re-enrolment reminders. The date you choose needs to be within a 6 month window; 3 months before and 3 months after the third anniversary of their staging date (or last re-enrolment date)

If you have workers to re-enrol we’ll send them enrolment notices, and opt-out confirmations if any of them opt out.

You can download our ‘Re-enrolment explained’ leaflet to share with your workers.