There is a good reason that Workie has been very busy…
If you’re a small business employing up to 50 staff, you might like to know that February was the deadline to have a workplace pension in place. By the time you read this you should have completed your workplace pension tasks, or at least arranged for a third party – your financial advisor or payroll agent for example, to have completed these for you.
As a reminder, here are the more salient points of workplace pension;
- Workplace pension, also known as auto enrolment, is a legal obligation for enrolling your staff into a workplace pension scheme.
- Contributions must be at least 5% of qualifying earnings, with at least 2% of that contributed by the employer;
- From April 2019, this will increase to 8% with at least 3% contributed by the employer;
- Employers can choose to defer contributions for up to 3 months for new employees. This provides a handy breathing space to budget for the anticipated additional costs, and to align any probationary periods;
If you’re not experiencing any smug satisfaction that you’ve complied, then it’s definitely time to have a chat with your financial advisor or payroll provider.
The Pension Regulator, the government body tasked with overseeing workplace pensions, will soon be dropping rather stern reminder letters onto the doormats of employers not complying with the rules.
So, in summary, get on with it!
