As soon as you have employees – even if it’s only one person – you’ll need to set up a workplace pension. This is known as your ‘duties start date’. It’s best to start the ball rolling as soon as possible to meet The Pensions Regulator’s requirements.
Within six weeks of your duties start date, you must tell employees they’re being assessed for auto enrolment and explain all their options.
You must explain to each employee:
- how they will be affected by auto enrolment, and
- the deadlines they have to make their choices.
Remember, we can send the statutory communications for you, including postponement notices.
You can delay auto enrolment by up to three months, known as ‘postponement’. This could be useful if, for example, you have employees on short-term or temporary contracts who won’t still be working for you after three months.
If you decide to postpone your start date you’ll need to tell your employees. Remember, we can do this for you.
Once your workplace pension is up and running you must make sure you assess your workers and upload your pension data files in good time and arrange for contributions to be collected promptly by Direct Debit for every relevant pay period.
Every three years from when you set up your workplace pension you have to check whether employees who previously opted out still qualify for auto enrolment and re-enrol them if they do.
You’ll need to send enrolment notices to any employees you re-enrol, along with opt-out confirmations if any of them opt out again. Again, we can do this for you.