Overview
Legal obligations for employers to provide pensions are now a reality for many organisations. Workplace pension reform (WPR) will affect all UK employers, irrespective of size or type of business.
For the first time, certain workers will have to be automatically enrolled into a pension scheme that meets the quality criteria and pay a minimum level of contributions. This obligation can have challenging and wide-ranging implications for businesses and failure to comply could mean stringent penalties.
Our Combined Human Resources Solutions team can help businesses prepare, to remain compliant and manage auto-enrolment in an efficient, legally compliant and cost-effective way. We offer a unique combination of pensions, employment and HR law and understand the complex legal, HR, payroll and IT issues.
A one-stop-shop for advice
With the support of 70 dedicated employment and pensions experts behind us, we're ideally placed to advise on the implications of these landmark changes in pensions law for public and private sector employers and pension schemes, including:
- advising on the range of new duties that employers will have to comply with under the reforms
- helping employers and pension schemes to implement the reforms in respect of existing and new pension provision
- supporting on the administration issues employers and pension schemes will need to consider
- helping businesses with administering new enrolment processes, paying for mandatory contributions and monitoring their workforces to ensure compliance with the new employer duties
Our clients
We've been the legal advisers of choice for many businesses needing to successfully comply with their automatic-enrolment duties, ranging from some of the largest retailers to international airlines and master trust providers.
We provided cutting edge pensions advice to the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) to help it prepare for launch. NEST now has over one million members and provides thousands of employers with an automatic enrolment scheme.
Our team also worked with the HR, pensions and payroll teams at a top five supermarket to ensure the successful on-time introduction of a new auto-enrolment compliant cash balance scheme for 130,000 employees. This involved a new pension scheme being set up, along with a ground-breaking communication exercise encouraging the workforce to understand more about financial planning and saving for retirement. Team experience, including secondment at the DWP and NEST, gave the client clear advice as the legislation was unfolding.
Online resources to help your organisation
The Pensions Regulator's guidance
The Pensions Regulator has issued a series of detailed guidance notes on workplace pension reform along with summaries for pension providers and employers. The detailed guidance notes cover all aspects of workplace pension reform and are written in plain English and have practical examples.
The Pensions Regulator's interactive tools
The Pensions Regulator's online tools allow a user to quickly and easily identify an employer's staging date, the extent of employer duties in respect of their staff, the minimum amount an employer will have to pay for an individual staff member, and also provides an explanation of the process an employer will need to follow to automatically enrol its staff.
The Department for Work and Pensions
The DWP has produced a useful workplace pension reforms toolkit which offers guidance and fact sheets and also case studies to show how individuals may be affected by the changes.
