When to start preparing

To ensure you are fully compliant with the legislation, you must enrol all your eligible employees in a pension scheme by no later than the compulsory staging date. This date is set by the Pensions Regulator based on employer size.

To make sure you are properly prepared, it is recommended that you start your planning 12-18 months in advance.

Use this calculator to find your compulsory staging date and any earlier staging dates on which you can start automatically enrolling.

What about an earlier staging date?

The staging date given to you by the Regulator is the absolute latest date by which you need to have your auto-enrolment arrangements in place. However, you can choose to do it earlier than the date assigned to you; this will become your new staging date.

There are a few reasons why you should consider doing this:

Convenience - The staging date you get from the Regulator may not be the most convenient time to make major pension and benefit changes. For example, it may fall half-way through a flex or pension scheme year. It is also unlikely to coincide with your financial year or pay reviews.

Reduce admin - The staging date is also used to determine the 12-month period for which each employee’s minimum contribution must be paid. This 12-month period is from your staging date to its anniversary, and each subsequent anniversary. As the contributions need to be paid based on earnings over this period, testing this could be difficult and create an administrative burden. It may therefore be a good idea to coincide it with a pension scheme year, a flex year, or any other period you normally use to set contributions and benefits.

Re-enrolment - When putting your process in place, it can be easy to overlook the fact that any employees who have opted out need to be re-enrolled every three years. This needs to be done on the third anniversary of your staging date, or up to three months either side. While this may seem far off, if you anticipate those dates may not be convenient, you could consider moving your staging date.