Auto-enrolment turns one today, SME shift begins
1 October 2013
The director of automatic enrolment at The Pensions Regulator says the organisation is shifting its focus to SME employers who are still to introduce the new scheme, a year on from the scheme opening for business.
Tue, 1 Oct 2013The director of automatic enrolment at The Pensions Regulator says the organisation is shifting its focus to SME employers who are still to introduce the new scheme, a year on from the scheme opening for business.
And two firms who have already staged tell recruiter.co.uk that the process has worked relatively smoothly, once the necessary preparatory legwork had been put in.
The Pensions Regulator’s Charles Counsell, director of auto-enrolment, says: “We recognise that medium and smaller employers staging in the next 18 months need tools and information created for them. We have tested new products with these medium employers and have refreshed our website, with simpler step-by-step tools and drop-down information.”
But he adds that this is “not the end to our development of new products”, with communications aimed at the smallest employers, who will stage, or introduce, from summer 2015 onwards, due to start in due course.
The regulator has three “key messages” a year in to auto-enrolment:
1. Have you checked your staging date?
2. Allow plenty of time
3. Choose a scheme and software six months before staging
This first one, while seemingly straightforward, is key, a spokesperson tells recruiter.co.uk. The schedule for staging is based upon how many staff firms had on 1 April 2012, not how many they have now or on the staging date. Employers can check their date online via the regulator's website.
Similar advice comes from NEST, the public national workplace pension scheme provider, which also warns against assuming that the pension or payroll provider will handle everything for you automatically, or assuming that there will be a high opt-out rate.
Tim Jones, chief executive officer of NEST, says that as smaller employers come onto the scene, “we all have to up the pace to be prepared for much higher volumes and to meet the challenges implementing automatic enrolment brings”.
Derek Kelly, managing director of umbrella firm Parasol, which has already staged, comments: “It’s been fine; we were lucky in that we’ve always done pensions… so we understand pensions, our payroll was built to have pensions.”
He also says that while NEST has been “very good and very reliable”, they aren’t completely geared up for the agency world. “What they struggle with is the pace of the recruitment world,” he says. “The hardest bit of all this has been educating NEST.”
Matthew Brown, MD of back office service firm giant group, says: “I would say apart from the heavy system work that has to be put in place, it all works pretty smoothly.”
The company will stage in January 2016 through its umbrella solution, but has already auto-enrolled 5,000 workers through outsourced payroll offering, giant precision.
Brown also comments that information received from the regulator, from NEST and from its other provider NOW: Pensions, has been “very good”.
A spokesperson for the Forum of Private Business also tells recruiter.co.uk that “it’s essential that you get your facts straight… give yourself plenty of time”, and points to some advice it published on the matter last month.
Paul Leandro, an associate at pension consultancy Barnett Waddingham, comments that to date auto-enrolment “appears to have been relatively successful”, saying it has “provided the catalyst for some employers to review their pension arrangements”. However, he admits that this process “has not always been a smooth one”.
And two firms who have already staged tell recruiter.co.uk that the process has worked relatively smoothly, once the necessary preparatory legwork had been put in.
The Pensions Regulator’s Charles Counsell, director of auto-enrolment, says: “We recognise that medium and smaller employers staging in the next 18 months need tools and information created for them. We have tested new products with these medium employers and have refreshed our website, with simpler step-by-step tools and drop-down information.”
But he adds that this is “not the end to our development of new products”, with communications aimed at the smallest employers, who will stage, or introduce, from summer 2015 onwards, due to start in due course.
The regulator has three “key messages” a year in to auto-enrolment:
1. Have you checked your staging date?
2. Allow plenty of time
3. Choose a scheme and software six months before staging
This first one, while seemingly straightforward, is key, a spokesperson tells recruiter.co.uk. The schedule for staging is based upon how many staff firms had on 1 April 2012, not how many they have now or on the staging date. Employers can check their date online via the regulator's website.
Similar advice comes from NEST, the public national workplace pension scheme provider, which also warns against assuming that the pension or payroll provider will handle everything for you automatically, or assuming that there will be a high opt-out rate.
Tim Jones, chief executive officer of NEST, says that as smaller employers come onto the scene, “we all have to up the pace to be prepared for much higher volumes and to meet the challenges implementing automatic enrolment brings”.
Derek Kelly, managing director of umbrella firm Parasol, which has already staged, comments: “It’s been fine; we were lucky in that we’ve always done pensions… so we understand pensions, our payroll was built to have pensions.”
He also says that while NEST has been “very good and very reliable”, they aren’t completely geared up for the agency world. “What they struggle with is the pace of the recruitment world,” he says. “The hardest bit of all this has been educating NEST.”
Matthew Brown, MD of back office service firm giant group, says: “I would say apart from the heavy system work that has to be put in place, it all works pretty smoothly.”
The company will stage in January 2016 through its umbrella solution, but has already auto-enrolled 5,000 workers through outsourced payroll offering, giant precision.
Brown also comments that information received from the regulator, from NEST and from its other provider NOW: Pensions, has been “very good”.
A spokesperson for the Forum of Private Business also tells recruiter.co.uk that “it’s essential that you get your facts straight… give yourself plenty of time”, and points to some advice it published on the matter last month.
Paul Leandro, an associate at pension consultancy Barnett Waddingham, comments that to date auto-enrolment “appears to have been relatively successful”, saying it has “provided the catalyst for some employers to review their pension arrangements”. However, he admits that this process “has not always been a smooth one”.
- Meanwhile Helen Livesey, UK head of payroll management at recruitment firm Hays, tells recruiter.co.uk that the company has seen a 40% increase in payroll vacancies registered and filled across the UK, commenting that demand should “remain healthy in 2014 due to the hefty workload associated with the rollout of pension auto enrolment”. Another payroll reform, Real-Time Information, had also kept Livesey and her team busy with hiring demand, we reported previously.
