Hi,
Our company's staging date for automatic enrolement phases in for us in Aug 17,which I am fine with.
What I am wondering is, if any new employees join us, after I have opted in all current employees, do I have to automatically opt them in too? Is this now going to be the routine of payroll -for all new employees that are elegible to be opted in?
Thank you.
Maria
Replies (12)
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as, in our workplace, the accounts dept. is usually the last one to find out that somebody started working for us (sometimes a 2-3 weeks prior)- I've adopted to postpone all new starters for anything up to 3 months. that way all I need to do is a quick assessment and send a letter advising them of the date they will be automatically enrolled (if meeting the criteria). then at least I don't have a mad rush at payroll time when someone actually realises that the poor new starter wont get paid until we have all their details at the last moment!
You should be able to pretty much automate the whole process if you have half way decent payroll software.
No - you don't "opt them in".
You enrol them.
If there's any opting in to be done, the employee does it.
Take care that you understand the terms used. You could be taking the wrong action if you misunderstand.
Brightpay is EXCELLENT at auto enrolment. If you add any new employees after Staging Date, it automatically assesses them and flags up what you need to do.
Ditto Brightpay. The little flag appears against any new starter & leads you through. Automatically postpone new starters. Much easier. After end of postponement period it flags up again and leads you through to enrol. Remember EVERY new starter requires a letter
If you are using postponement, every new starter requires TWO letters - one on starting to notify postponement and the other on eventual enrolment (or non-enrolment if they do not qualify).
Our pension provider does all the paperwork. We simply enter new starters details on-line and they automatically send out the appropriate letters and notifies our payroll when to start deductions. Apart from our monthly deduction report, the only other thing we have to deal with is to make sure we get the correct authority for opt-ins not eligible for auto-enrolement.
In short yes but like others have said a decent payroll package should automate this process for you and flag those new employees that need to be enrolled and those whose circumstances have changed. With good software, this process is not time consuming or complicated.
I use BrightPay which makes it easy. It produces both letters EuanMacLennan mentioned and the letter is customised to the employees category - eligible, non-eligible etc. You can't go wrong. I'm sure other payroll packages do similar.
Key thing not to forget - you need to assess (and reassess) all employees at each pay period.