18-12 months to auto-enrolment
- Nominate the contact for correspondence from the Pensions Regulator.
- Work out your staging date; you can find it on the Pensions Regulator’s website.
- Set up your auto-enrolment project team, including representatives from HR, pensions, payroll, finance and communications.
- Assess who in your organisation needs to be automatically enrolled.
- Engage a pension adviser if necessary.
- Review what existing provision you have for pensions and other benefits.
12-9 months
- Calculate the costs of auto-enrolment for your organisation; decide on what sort of scheme to offer.
- Decide on how auto-enrolment fits within your overall reward strategy and the benefits philosophy of your organisation; consider how auto-enrolment will impact on other benefits.
- Formulate your strategy for managing data; decide whether to use your existing payroll provider, middleware from a pension provider, a third-party data hub or a flexible benefits system.
- Start training relevant employees, including pension and payroll staff, and trustees if appropriate.
- Consider your communications strategy.
9-3 months
- Finalise selection of pension provider.
- Put your data management strategy in place and cleanse data.
3 months to go
- Test HR and payroll systems with pension provider.
- Test record-keeping system.
- Start initial communications to employees.
- Enrol eligible staff in qualifying pension scheme.
After auto-enrolment
- Maintain records of employee contributions, qualifying earnings and opt-outs.
- Register with the Pensions Regulator.
- Monitor pension scheme on an ongoing basis to ensure it remains up to standard.
- Enrol new employees after three months.
- Every three years, re-enrol all employees who opted out, unless they did so within the last 12 months.
- Increase contributions in 2017 and 2018.
