The government introduced legislation to introduce automatic enrolment into a workplace pension in 2008. Its aim was to encourage people to save into a pension after it was found that millions of UK citizens will have little or no pension savings, above and beyond the State Pension, when they retire.
In order to reverse this trend and encourage workers to save more, it was made compulsory for all eligible workers to be opted into a workplace pension scheme.
Subject to certain eligibility criteria, all employers must offer a qualifying pension scheme to their workers without discouraging or influencing them to opt out.