Auto Enrolment Spotlight on SMEs

The auto enrolment spotlight is now very much focused on small to medium businesses. Over 600,000 SMEs are due to enrol in the tax year 2016/2017.

Under automatic enrolment regulation, all employers must have suitable workplace pension arrangements in place to which they must contribute and automatically enrol eligible workers.

Every employer in the country has been given a staging date, by which they must have enrolled by. The advice to small employers is to know your staging date and start planning early. If you don’t already know your staging date it can be found here.

Key aspects of any planning stage will include:

• Review any existing pension scheme: if there is a pension scheme in place, does it meet the statutory requirements for auto enrolment?
• Choose a Pension Provider: as a small employer, will you opt to go with the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) or will you shop around for a provider who may better suit your needs?
• Decide how to manage auto enrolment: managing auto enrolment does not have to be a nightmare, financially or otherwise. There are low cost options available to employers; for example BrightPay provides all automatic enrolment functionality as standard, simply process AE with your payroll. Further details on BrightPay’s auto enrolment offering can be found here. 

Although some policy decisions will be harder than others, small employers do not need to dread auto enrolment. Since the program’s roll out in 2012, many of the teething problems have been ironed out, and a number of rules have been simplified and relaxed. In addition, software solutions and support are now far better established, all of which mean SMEs can manage auto enrolment easily in-house.

In addition to the above planning stages, there are other concerns that the small employer may want to start considering:

• Data Quality: are your employee records up-to-date and correct? Incorrect information could result in an employee being enrolled or not enrolled incorrectly, putting your business at risk of breaching statutory obligations.
• Communication: regulations set specific communications which employees must receive from their employer. Are you familiar with these? Can your payroll provider assist you?
• New Employees: there is no qualifying period for auto enrolment, if a new employee meets the age and earnings limits they will need to be enrolled from their first day, even if they are on probation. If you have a probation policy stating the employees must have successfully completed their probation period before they are entitled to join a pension scheme, this will need to be reviewed. Some employers choose to postpone enrolment, this can be done for a period of 3 months, allowing employers the opportunity to assess a new employee.

AE can also pose questions in relation to your contracts of employment, and how different types of workers should be dealt with. Answers to these questions and more can be found here. 

Bright Contracts – Employment Contracts and Handbooks.
BrightPay – Payroll & Auto Enrolment Software.

Dress Code - To heel or not to heel

A recent case  has brought the issue of dress code into the headlines. A temporary secretary started on her first day as a receptionist in the large Accountancy Firm Price Waterhouse Cooper, only to be told she had to go and buy herself a pair or heeled shoes as the flat shoes she wore were not deemed to be appropriate as they were not part of the dress code that the recruitment agency stipulated. She refused, stating that male employees did not have to wear heels so why should she. She was sent home without pay.

So this brings us to the question, how important is a dress code in the workplace?

The employer is fully within his rights to include a policy in the company handbook stating that employees must wear a particular dress code, i.e. smart, business-like attire or a uniform if there is one. If the employees are dealing with customers on a face to face level or representing the company in any way then it is especially important that the employees are seen to be dressed appropriately in neat and smart attire.

But can an employer make requests from one group of employees and not from another? Can an employer request that female staff wear heels over flat shoes? In this day and age and with all the advancements made for equality across all I would have to say no. But obviously there are some archaic ideologies still in practice out there.

Commenting on the situation, Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK, said: "Forty-one years on since the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act, it's baffling that there are still some companies that are practicing this sort of outdated sexism."

"In our view, unless equally stringent requirements are applied to male workers, it is likely that a requirement to wear two inch heels would constitute unlawful discrimination, and we will look into whether action needs to be taken."

The employee in question has now set up a petition asking for it to be made illegal for companies to require women to wear the footwear for their jobs.

Bright Contracts – Employment Contracts and Handbooks.
BrightPay – Payroll & Auto Enrolment Software.