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.
