5 tips for streamlining your small business auto enrolment
The workplace pensions laws are changing and thousands of small business owners are facing their deadline to comply with the pensions automatic enrolment laws. The good news is that whether you have staged or not, auto enrolment doesn’t have to be as costly, or as time consuming as you think.
Here are 5 tips for streamlining your auto enrolment process:
1) Simplify your payroll
The way your payroll is currently managed is the first area to look at when streamlining how you manage auto enrolment. The current manual system of running payroll can be unnecessarily complicated and time consuming. Instead, choose simple and effective, online payroll solutions such as Kashflow Payroll, which can perform the necessary auto enrolment assessment at the same time as your payroll run, cutting out the hassle and making the process much simpler. Automation is ultimately the key to the success of this method, and it it goes without saying that streamlined business processes will ultimately lead to a more speedy implementation of the auto enrolment legislation, amongst other changes possibly unrelated to your payroll.
2) Prepare as early as possible
The better prepared you are ahead of your staging date, the easier the process will be. Key to this is fully understanding what you as an employer are responsible for. Click here to read 9 key auto enrolment responsibilities for employers.
3) Adopt better communications
Your employee pay and pensions information is confidential, sensitive information that you as an employer should be at pains to ensure is delivered in an effective, secure way. Securing (and automating) how you deal with communicating payslips and other critical pay and pensions information to your staff, is crucial to ensure this key part of complying with the auto enrolment laws is as secure and simple as possible. Solutions like KashFlow Payroll take care of all this necessary communications, also storing it securely in the cloud, giving you as an employer peace of mind. Electronic solutions also mean you can save money, as cutting down on the amount of direct mail and postal mail that you send as a company will greatly reduce costs, reduce your carbon footprint and actually increase efficiency.
4) Seek advice from the experts
Whether it’s turning to The Pensions Regulator for advice, or your payroll software provider, seek out the expert advice you need as soon as you need it. The Pensions Regulator has a range of support for business owners, or if you use solutions like KashFlow Payroll to take care of your auto enrolment needs, then get in touch about support and training.
5) Avoid fines
This final tip is less about streamlining and more a warning about what you could face if you miss your staging date The Pension Regulator will issue a warning and a fixed fine of £400 if your business does not comply by your staging date. In addition to this, the regulator will then issue a daily fine, dependant on the amount of employees your company has. So be sure to avoid fines and find out your staging date (if you haven’t already) by clicking here.