Automatic enrolment and seasonal staff

If you employ short-term staff you'll need to make sure you're up to speed with how they need to be treated for automatic enrolment purposes.

For retailers seasonal staff are common and as such, issues can arise when it comes to know which of your employees need to be considered for automatic enrolment into a pension scheme and when.

For seasonal staff the employer duties for auto-enrolment apply to these workers each time work is undertaken. For example, if a company employs a worker for three months, then employs them again six months later, the employer duties will apply on both occasions.

In terms of how they are assessed for auto-enrolment, seasonal workers will generally need to be assessed by reference to how the employer pays them and how much they earn.

For example, if an employer normally pays workers every Friday for work done between Saturday and Thursday, the employer would have to work out how much the workers earned between Saturday and Thursday then determine whether they need to be automatically enrolled or invited to join a pension scheme based on how much they earned (currently applicable to the equivalent of £10,000 per annum).

The issue of seasonal staff can be made even more complex if you employ a lot of people on a variety of contracts, and have high staff turnover. One option you may wish to explore is postponement.

Postponing your auto-enrolment duties

Employers have a duty to assess their workforce to identify the types of worker they employ and the duties they'll have to carry out. For a maximum of three months, postponement gives employers the option to defer:

• the assessment of their workers or
• the auto enrolment date for workers who have been assessed.

This allows employers to smooth the administration of their employer duties and align it with their existing business processes. For example, they can use postponement to:

• stagger the assessment of workers at their staging date
• align the assessment of workers with their payroll processes
• avoid having to assess seasonal workers
• avoid having to automatically enrol those with one-off spikes in earnings
• avoid calculating pension contributions on part month earnings.
  

Where postponement is being used and the contract of employment ends before the end of the postponement period, the employer duties fall away at the end of the worker's contract (assuming that the worker hasn't asked to be assessed during the postponement period). Where an employer re-employs the same worker, they can operate the postponement period again if they wish, as long as any previous postponement period has finished.

See the Pensions Regulator factsheet on postponement for more details.

Need more guidance?

ActSmart can introduce you to Elliott Sanders of Copthorne Hundred Wealth Management, a Partner Practice of St. James's Place Wealth Management who can offer all businesses, no matter what size, advice on pension auto-enrolment.

St. James's Place Wealth Management are one of the leading wealth management organisations in the UK with a national network of advisers. Using their experience, they offer businesses and individuals a wealth management service, incorporating pension advice. The advice is face-to-face and tailored to your business or personal objectives.

• Complimentary initial consultation
• Face-to-face advice
• Impartial advice
• Advice is guaranteed by St. James's Place when recommending any products or services provided by the St. James's Place Group

Find out more here or phone Elliot Sanders's team on 01372 721616 / email Elliott.Sanders@sjpp.co.uk.

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