17th March 2015

AE in a box: The impending auto enrolment challenge

Whilst the challenges in any business are unique to their particular sector, profession or field there’s one thing which will unite many business owners in 2015….

For the first time they’ll have to comply with auto enrolment regulation

Whilst all of the larger business and a fair amount of medium sized employers have already complied the reality is that the true challenges for most employers lay ahead.

However there’s a couple of issues, if you’re a business owner, responsible for auto enrolment or work with businesses in a professional capacity, you need to be aware of.

Many employers, if relatively small in nature are making an assumption that they don’t need to deal with auto enrolment until a later stage.

I’ve had countless meetings with accountants and employers who have made the assumption (based on what they’d heard) that they didn’t need to comply until 2016 or 2017.

Whilst this might be true for many businesses it’s a dangerous assumption to make.

You see for many businesses their “staging date” is based on their PAYE reference number.

Therefore the assumption that your business, or your clients businesses don’t need to worry about auto enrolment yet is a falsehood.

Employers, and the professionals who work with employers, regardless of their size should be focussed on whether auto enrolment impacts them sooner than they think.

Thankfully checking whether auto enrolment applies to you or your clients business is a pretty easy process…

All you need to do is your (or the employer you’re representing) PAYE reference number and check staging dates to confirm when you should really prepare…

Once there’s an understanding of when auto enrolment has an impact the next question which needs to be answered is simple….

How should employers tackle auto enrolment?

The answer to this is simple.  There’s a choice….

Either take a “do it yourself” approach (cheap in financial cost but potentially dangerous considering the complexity of the auto enrolment rules)

Pay a consultant (expensive but as long as the professional has sufficient experience a thorough way of meeting the new legislation)

or look at a third way.

A system which provides a track employers can run on.

A system which gives an employer the tools to to the job.

A system which is a comparatively low cost way to deal with auto enrolment properly.

There are a few systems out there designed to help in this regard….

Read more about AE In a Box on our Auto-enrolment Microsite.

Business Development, Auto-Enrolment