Payroll departments within Small and Medium sized enterprises are faced with the prospect of phasing in of ‘Automatic enrolment’; the scheme requiring all employers to provide a pension scheme for their employees.

Between 1 October 2012 and 1 February 2014 this has been a requirement for larger firms (those with 250 or more employees). The next stage will be to roll out auto-enrolment to employers with between 50 and 249 employees between 1 April 2014 and 1 April 2015. The precise “staging date” will be assigned by the Pensions Regulator on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions(DWP). Employers with between 30 and 49 employees will be affected between 1 August 2015 and 1 October 2015, and finally existing business with fewer than 30 employees will be required to auto-enrol their employees onto a pension scheme between 1 January 2016 and 1 April 2017.

One way to delay the staging date for employers with fewer than 50 employees on 1 April 2012, but that were on that date part of a larger PAYE scheme shared by other employers, would be to opt to move their staging date back to the date that would apply had they not been incorporated into the larger scheme.

Although the start date for your business may still be some time away, but keep in mind that changes may be required to your payroll system if you are to make deductions from employees’ pay for their pension contributions.