IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PENSION!

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PENSION!

There has been a lot talk about the tsunami of businesses that will soon hit their staging dates and have to comply with the new workplace pension legislation (known as auto-enrolment).  Introduced back in 2012 for the largest employers, auto-enrolment is now firmly hitting the SME sector with over 150,000 businesses employing fewer than 50 people expected to stage in 2015/16 and a further 620,000 in 2016/17.

It’s a complex area but one where being prepared well in advance will pay dividends – the fines for non-compliance are significant.  The Pensions Regulator provides a lot of good information but it’s still an area which we find employers want to be guided through the choices they need to make.

BUT, and here’s the thing, the headache for auto-enrolment only starts once you’ve got a pension scheme set up. You may have thought that the initial assessment of your workers, choosing a pension provider, working out your contribution basis, deciding whether to use a postponement period and figuring out how much it’s going to cost would be the tricky bit.  It’s not.  The real burden will come from the on-going administration, record keeping and communication.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PAYROLL

The ongoing process that is required per payroll process includes checking employee eligibility, enrolling those that have become eligible into a chosen pension scheme, deferring those that may not want to be enrolled and sending out communications in line with the new legislation.  You are also required to retain all documents and information for a minimum of 6 years.

Assessing your workforce and getting a pension scheme set up should not be complex – especially if using an adviser that can make it simple, low hassle and cost effective to get set up with a scheme.  The real hard work comes after everything has been set up – it’s the ongoing month-in, month-out administration that will cause the real headaches.

Whether you plan to do your payroll in house, or through an outsourced provider, it is vital to ensure that you’re clear on how it will work to ensure you don’t give yourself a major headache.  In our opinion the assessment of your workforce, the communication with them and the ability to maintain an audit trail should be all done off the same data and as much of it as possible automated.  Pulling information from a pension system to put back into the payroll system doesn’t sound like a great solution.  Automated communication with employees will take a lot of the pain away.

Our clients benefit from a solution that assesses their employees as part of the payroll process, auto enrolling employees into a qualifying pension scheme.  Our e-payslips service publishes P60’s payslips and pensions’ communications directly to their employees.  This will happen within the payroll system, and can then be viewed by their employees online, or directly on their smart phone or tablet.  This alleviates the entire burden of distribution from the employer.

Allow us to take care of your auto enrolment responsibilities and alleviate the headache that comes with it, and be totally confident that all your legislative obligations have been met.  There is no need for employers to spend weeks to implement auto enrolment, nor the 1-3 days per month to deal with the process on an on-going basis.