The government’s announcement that workers will not be automatically enrolled into workplace pension schemes from day one of their employment from 2012 has been welcomed by recruiters.

Under the proposals, announced by the minister of state for pensions, Steve Webb yesterday, workers will be automatically enrolled onto a workplace pension scheme after three months. However, they will have the option of signing up on day one.

In a statement the Department for Work & Pensions told Recruiter that the three month waiting period would “remove a significant regulatory burden for agencies and employers with high staff turnover” by saving employers automatically enrolling someone who will only be working there for a few weeks.

Andy Smith, head of regulation and employment in legal services at Adecco UK & Ireland told Recruiter that the proposal was welcome.

Smith explained that the original proposals where agency workers were automatically enrolled from day one and could then opt out would have led agencies to make a lot of refunds of agency workers pension contributions  [to those who did not want to join and then decided to opt out].  However by not automatically enrolling workers from day one, he said “a lot of this unnecessary and wasteful admin” would be avoided. 

Tom Hadley, director of policy and professional services at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) told Recruiter: “The three month period will make it lot easier for recruiters to implement what overall are necessary changes. Everybody understands the pension time bomb but the measures must be workable and not create an unmanageable bureaucracy for recruiters.

Ian Curry, a solicitor at Wragge & Co told Recruiter that while on the face of it the three month waiting period could be “hugely beneficial” to agencies and to recruiters, the question was how many workers decided to opt in from day one. “As ever the devil is in the detail”, said Curry.