New duties on employers have been introduced to help more people save for their retirement and these duties include:

• the automatic enrolment of employees (and perhaps some other people who do work for the employer) into a pension scheme and

• a requirement to make contributions for those people into a pension scheme

Employees will also have to make contributions.

This is the effect of the new law known as 'automatic enrolment'. The law came into force for very large employers on 1st October 2012  but fortunately, the automatic enrolment rules have staggered implementation dates based on the number of employees.

An employer can work out precisely when the automatic rules apply as the implementation date (known as the 'staging date') is based on the number of persons in an employer's PAYE scheme on the 1st April 2012. The higher the number of employees an employer has on that date, the earlier the staging date.

For those with less than 50 employees the earliest start date is 1st June 2015 but the precise date will depend not only on the actual number of employees on 1st April 2012 but alos on the employer's PAYE reference number. The earliest staging date for an employer with up to 30 employees on the 1st April 2012 is 1st June 2015 and the latest date is 1st April 2017.

Importantly, it does not matter how many employees an employer has on the staging date- there may be considerably more (or less) than on the 1st April 2012. If you are an employer, look at the number of employees you had on the 1st April 2012 to know where you stand.

Employers with less than 50 employees but are part of a larger PAYE scheme

You may be an employer of a company which has less than 50 employees but the company is part of a group of companies and therefore has a shared scheme with the other group employers.

There are special rules for such employers.

As the staging date is determined by the total number of persons in the group PAYE scheme on 1st April 2012, the date may be earlier than if based on the number of workers in the company alone.

An employer can find out the detailed staging date rules from 'thepensionsregulator.gov.uk'

So I've check my staging date and it's a long way off then?

Well it may appear that way but an employer needs to have everything in place by the staging date. We would suggest an employer needs to have an idea of what it means to them at least a year before the staging date and an outline table drawn up for the various matters that need to be arranged.