Step 2 Assess your staff

You must do this on your re-enrolment date.

On your re-enrolment date, you’ll need to assess certain staff to work out if you need to put them back into your pension scheme.

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On this page

1. Work out which staff to include in your assessment
2. Assess your staff
3. What's next?

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1. Work out which staff to include in your assessment

You only need to assess certain staff for re-enrolment.

Staff you must assess

You must assess staff who have:

• asked to leave (opted out of) your pension scheme
• left (ceased active membership of) your pension scheme after the end of the opt-out period
• stayed in your pension scheme – but chosen to reduce the level of pension contributions to below the minimum level

Staff you don't need to assess

You can leave out from your assessment any staff member who, on your re-enrolment date:

• is already in the pension scheme you use for automatic enrolment (a qualifying scheme)
• is aged 21 or under
• is at state pension age (SPA) or over
• has not yet had an automatic enrolment date (met the age and earnings criteria for automatic enrolment, or who has been postponed)

2. Assess your staff

You now need to work out if the staff you’re assessing meet the criteria to be put back into your pension scheme.

Staff you must re-enrol into your pension scheme

Any staff member who left your automatic enrolment pension scheme more than 12 months before your re-enrolment date and is:

• aged between 22 up to State Pension Age
• and earns over £10,000 a year, or £833 a month, or £192 a week

must be put into a pension scheme and you must both pay into it.

Staff that you can choose to re-enrol into your pension scheme

In addition to the staff that you must re-enrol, you can choose to re-enrol any staff member who is:

• aged between 22 up to State Pension Age
• and earns over £10,000 a year, or £833 a month, or £192 a week

and who:

• left your automatic enrolment (qualifying) pension scheme in the 12 months leading up to your re-enrolment date
• was paid a winding up lump sum in the 12 months before your re-enrolment date, then left your employment and were later re-employed by you
• has given notice or been given notice of the end of their employment
• has primary, enhanced or fixed protection from tax charges on their pension savings
• holds the office of director with the employer
• is a partner in a Limited Liability Partnership which is the employer, and is not treated for income tax purposes as falling within HMRC’s ‘salaried member’ rules

More information on the exceptions from the automatic re-enrolment duty and other employer duties can be found in Detailed guidance no. 1 – Employer duties and defining the workforce (PDF, 176kb, 34 pages).

3. What's next?

What you need to do next depends on whether you have staff to re-enrol into your scheme.

If you have staff to re-enrol

Put staff back into your pension scheme

You must do this within six weeks after your re-enrolment date

Having worked out which staff must be re-enrolled, you must now put them back into a pension scheme that you use for automatic enrolment and start paying into it. You must do this within six weeks of your re-enrolment date.

Once you've put your staff back into your pension scheme, you need to write to them to let them know. We’ll tell you how to do this on the next step.

Write to staff >

If you don't have staff to re-enrol

If you don’t have any staff to re-enrol, you still need to complete your re-declaration of compliance to tell us how you have met your re-enrolment duties. We will tell you how to do this on the next step.

Complete your re-declaration of compliance >

< Re-enrolment      Step 3. Write to staff that you've re-enrolled > 

Supporting resources

More information on the exceptions from the automatic re-enrolment duty and other employer duties can be found in
Detailed guidance no. 1 – Employer duties and defining the workforce (PDF, 176kb, 34 pages)

More information on re-enrolment can be found in
Detailed guidance for employers 11 - Automatic re-enrolment: Putting workers back into pension scheme member ship (PDF, 200kb, 28 pages)