A lot of employers with a small staff, me included, will not have spent much time worrying about auto enrolment yet as it all seems so far in the future. Today’s blog is meant as a bit of a wake up for us all:
- Every employer in the UK will be affected by auto enrolment, no matter the size of the work force or who it is we are employing;
- Don’t imagine for one minute that because your only employee is your wife/husband that you are excluded from the legislation you aren’t as even those only paying a salary to their spouse will need to consider their situation.
- Ah you are thinking I am fine because I don’t have any employees who want to be in the scheme – think again my friends. Employers with no-one in the pension scheme do not escape as they will still need to perform some administrative tasks for each and every pay period.
- Those of you with limited storage space will now have another problem as the records for the scheme have to be kept for a minimum of 6 years – again even if you have no-one enrolled in the scheme.
- There are pre-set deadlines by which time we all have to be ready. These deadlines are already established and are based on the number of employees you had in April 2012.
- It is imperative that you check your deadline as we all have to be ‘compliant’ by that date and this ‘compliance’ can include having a pension scheme in place that is at a stage to accept employees.
- You underestimate the amount of work required at your peril and I read recently that the recommendation is that you start to prepare 6 – 9 months ahead of your deadline.
- If you don’t get this right that you can expect a fine or even imprisonment for persistent non-compliance.
Happy days my friends!
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