As an employer, it is a legal requirement to have a workplace pension scheme for your eligible employees. Your pension scheme should be in place from the moment you first have an employee working for your business. This is referred to as your \u2018duties start date\u2019. Additionally, once a workplace pension scheme is up and running, you have legal duties to manage it. This includes auto-enrolling any eligible employees you hire onto your qualifying workplace scheme. Therefore, this article will explain what you, as an employer, need to know about managing workplace pension schemes in England. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A workplace pension scheme enables your business to contribute towards your staff\u2019s pension. Staff who are eligible will automatically enrol on your scheme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Staff who may be eligible to be enrolled on your workplace pension scheme are those who:<\/p>\n \n
You may find that staff become eligible after joining your business<\/a> rather than when you initially employed them due to a change in age or salary. In this instance, you must auto-enrol them in the scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if your employee meets the above criteria but has proved to you that they have lifetime allowance protection<\/a>, you are not obliged to enrol them on your workplace pension scheme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an employer, you are required to manage your workplace pension scheme. There are many facets to managing your pension scheme, and we explain the key ones in this section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The central part of managing your workplace pension scheme is contributing to it. Your staff must make contributions, but so do you as an employer. You should note that you should make your contributions on time and with accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may find that your employees become eligible for the pension at a later stage of their employment. This is because there has been a change in their age or their salary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, every three years from the date your first employee started working for you, you must re-enrol staff members back onto your pension scheme where either your employee:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When your staff meet the criteria to be enrolled onto your mentioned close due to a change or due to meeting the requirements to be re-enrolled, you must:<\/p>\n \n All your staff have the right to request to join or leave your workplace pension scheme. Therefore, when you receive such requests, you must respond immediately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When an employee requests to join your pensions scheme, you should:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alternatively, if an employee already in your pension scheme asks to leave, you should take action on their request within one month. You should note that all staff have an \u2018opt-out window\u2019 when joining your pension scheme, which means they leave within a month and get a refund for their contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To manage your workplace pension scheme, you must keep accurate records. These records are evidence of how you have conducted your pension schemes regarding your legal duties. You must generally keep records of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When managing your pension scheme, you must report certain information to the Pensions Regulator<\/a>. You can do this quickly through their service called \u2018Exchange<\/a>\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The information which you need to report includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\nManaging Your Workplace Pension Scheme<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Contributing Towards the Pension Scheme<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Update Changes for Re-Enrolment and Re-Declaration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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3. Respond to Requests to Leave or Join the Scheme<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Workplace Pension Scheme Record Keeping <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5. Reporting Duties<\/h3>\n\n\n\n