Research released today shows employers are beginning to recognise the need to allow time to plan for automatic enrolment, but many could face a steep learning curve to be ready on schedule.
To avoid problems, employers should check their staging date and start their automatic enrolment plan.
The proportion of medium employers who have drawn up plans and started to act on these plans has increased significantly compared to Autumn 2012, from 13% to 27%. The first wave of medium sized employers, those with between 160 and 250 staff, are due to stage in April 2014. These employers should now be making sure they have compatible payroll software in place and be well on way to selecting a qualifying scheme that suits their workforce.
The Pensions Regulator’s survey also indicates awareness of automatic enrolment remains high amongst all sizes of employers and attitudes supportive of the policy. Large and medium employers are significantly more positive about the changes than they were a year ago.
80% of medium employers believed automatic enrolment is a good idea for workers compared to 64% in Spring 2012.
But the regulator is warning against complacency, as the research shows levels of detailed understanding remain unchanged and awareness of the need to complete registration by declaring compliance information to the regulator after staging remains low.
The Pensions Regulator’s executive director of automatic enrolment Charles Counsell said:
“The response of the largest employers to automatic enrolment has been positive and at the start of August more than 1,600 employers had returned their compliance declaration to us by registering their information.
“But the vast majority of employers are yet to go through automatic enrolment, with tens of thousands of medium sized companies due to stage in 2014. Our call to action to employers to know your staging date and make a plan are more relevant than ever.
“This research is a key element of our understanding of how employers are responding to their new duties. We have tools and information on our website including a timeline planning tool and a suite of new guides to help employers with limited pensions experience to select a good quality scheme for automatic enrolment.”
Go to research and analysis to read the Employers' awareness, understanding and activity relating to workplace pension reforms Spring 2013 report in full. You can also find a technical report that includes the full data.
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