7 steps to prepare for automatic enrolment

Your staging date will be based on the number of persons in your PAYE scheme on 1 April 2012. You can find out your likely staging date now on our website:

• Staging date timeline

  A list of staging dates by PAYE scheme size plus:

  • staging date time bands for employers with fewer than 250 persons in their largest PAYE scheme
  • information on how to bring your staging date forward.
• Guidance Getting ready (PDF, 678kb, 25 pages)

  Section 2 contains detailed information on identifying your staging date. This will be helpful for:

  • employers with more than 1 PAYE scheme
  • multiple employers that share 1 PAYE scheme
  • employers that are part of complex corporate or group structures
  • identifying the staging date in the case of company takeovers and mergers
  • employers that do not have a PAYE scheme.

You will need to be able to identify any eligible jobholders working for you.

In addition to eligible jobholders, there are other types of worker:

• Non-eligible jobholder
• Entitled worker

You will need to be able to identify whether you have such workers. If you do, you will have employer duties in relation to them.

• Resource The different types of worker (PDF, 203kb, 3 pages)

  A diagram showing how the different types of worker relate to each other and the criteria for each type.

• Guidance Employer duties and defining the workforce (PDF, 474kb, 21 pages)

  Section 2 explains how to identify a ‘worker’ – the first step in assessing your workforce.

  Section 3 explains the different types of worker and the criteria for each.

• Guidance Assessing the workforce (PDF, 569kb, 24 pages)

  To identify what type of worker someone is, you will need to assess their earnings. This guidance explains:

  • how to make that assessment
  • how to assess groups of workers (as opposed to individuals).

  This guidance contains 2 flowcharts to help you make this assessment.

• Guidance Postponement (PDF, 834kb, 25 pages)

  An important part of the assessment process is deciding whether you want to use postponement. This guidance explains how the postponement provision operates and how to apply it.

  A flowchart is included to help you apply postponement.

You might have an existing scheme that you can use or adapt for automatic enrolment, or you may need to set up a new one:

• Guidance Pension schemes (PDF, 725kb, 34 pages)
  • How to assess whether your existing scheme is a qualifying scheme that you can continue to use for existing members who are eligible jobholders
  • The criteria a scheme must meet to be an automatic enrolment scheme and how to check
  • Flowcharts to help you make these assessments.

  It is important that the pension scheme you choose will deliver good outcomes for your workers’ retirement savings.

There are different information requirements for each category of worker.

• Resource Information to workers (PDF, 150kb, 7 pages)
  • What information you must provide for each type of worker
  • What generic information you must provide to all workers
  • Timescales for providing the information
  • The ways in which you can provide the information.

The process you will need to follow to automatically enrol the eligible jobholders you identified in step 2 is explained in:

• Guidance Automatic enrolment (PDF, 658kb, 22 pages)
  • How to automatically enrol
  • The information you must provide to the person you will be enrolling and to the scheme you are enrolling them into
  • When to automatically enrol
  • Ongoing responsibilities once automatic enrolment is completed.
• Guidance Opting out (PDF, 493kb, 18 pages)

  Workers who have been automatically enrolled have the right to ‘opt out’ of pension saving. This guidance explains how to process opt-outs from workers who want to leave a scheme.

• Guidance Opting in, joining and contractual enrolment (PDF, 566kb, 24 pages)

  Information about the rights of workers to join a pension scheme outside of automatic enrolment and what you will need to tell them.

You are required to register with us shortly after your staging date. Registration will be a straightforward process that you can complete online.

• Guidance Keeping records (PDF, 310kb, 11 pages)

  Full details of all the records you will need to keep in relation to your workers and your pension scheme.

You will be required to make ongoing contributions to your workers’ pension schemes. The minimum contribution amounts are set out in law and explained in:

• Guidance Pension schemes (PDF, 725kb, 34 pages)

  Section 5 explains how the qualifying criteria translate to contribution amounts.

• Phasing

  The minimum contribution rates that an employer must pay into their worker's pension scheme will be introduced gradually. This is known as 'phasing'.