Employers – Is your re enrolment date approaching – 5 things you need to do

Posted: 21^st January 2019

Just when your workplace pension is running smoothly Re-Enrolment time is here – 5 things you need to do  

Employers who have provided a workplace pension have Re-enrolment duties three years after their original staging date. There are 5 things you need to do and and 3 things you might want to take the opportunity to consider.

Five things you must do  

• Select your Re enrolment Date First find your original staging date and add three years. This date is the centre of your Re-enrolment window. You can choose your re-enrolment date to be any date within the six month window beginning 3 months before this date and ending 3 months after.
• Identify those employees who were auto-enrolled but have opted out in the period since your original staging date. This is anyone who is between age 22 and State Pension Age, earns more than £10,000 per annum and is not contributing to the workplace pension at your re-enrolment date.
• Write to those employees explaining that they must be re enrolled from your re-enrolment date. This should include an explanation of how they can opt out again if they wish.
• Re enrol those employees with the workplace pension provider from your re enrolment date. Ensure your payroll system is set up to calculate the appropriate contributions for these people from the chosen re enrolment date and pay the contributions to your workplace pension provider
• Complete a re declaration of compliance for the pensions regulator and submit this no later than 5 months after the centre of your re enrolment window.

Three things you may wish to consider  

• Additional Employee communications. This could be to help employees understand the benefits of saving through a workplace pension particularly the employer contribution and the government tax relief or could cover wider financial issues and questions. Ensuring employees financial well being can help employers with succession planning as well as employee engagement.
• Review of your workplace pension provider . Is everything running smoothly ? Are your employees happy with the information they receive, the investment options and the options at retirement. Are all your employees benefiting from government tax relief including those not paying tax.
• Audit of processes including payroll processes ,calculation and payment of contributions and timeliness of investment. The Pensions regulator has recently been turning their attention to data issues.

If you have any questions or would like any help or an informal chat contact Elaine Tarver on elaine.tarver@millpensions.co.uk or 0771 275 1336 . If you would like to receive tips help and information demystifying pensions direct to your inbox sign up at www.millpensions.co.uk