Why Technology Is A BIG Deal In Auto Enrolment Staging?
Rolled out in 2012, auto enrolment is a must for employers in UK now to ensure handy pension savings for their employees. The saving scheme has shown a steady momentum with around 45,000 firms staging for auto enrolment in 2015 and the number has upped to a whopping 110,000 in the first quarter of this year. However, it's just 3% of UK staging for automatic enrolment and many more are still to establish the needed compliance to the pension savings scheme. Now, why the gap? Well, compliance to this new pension regulation implies a good deal of hard work for the employers which they are often reluctant to take up. This is where technology would be a BIG help.
Automatic enrolment platforms
Looking at the huge volume of admin & data requirements regarding auto enrolment compliance on the part of the employers, a good lot of tech companies have come up with automatic enrolment platforms. These technology-driven solutions are termed as "middleware"- the link which sits between HR of the employer & payroll systems & provider of pension scheme. The auto enrolment software will remove manual work for the employers, easing the staging process for them, which will further lead to more active staging from the UK employers. Most companies would usually require a simple auto enrolment solution that they will plug in & play, sans any complexity. In fact, it can be said that technology is a winner in auto enrolment staging and management as it simplifies the whole task in little time & at low cost.
How technology will help to speed up auto enrolment
Those planning to manage auto enrolment manually have a huge lot of hard work ahead-
Pension Regulator's Guidance includes 11 chapters, nineteen appendixes as well as 397 pages. If planned to go manually, comprehending & implementing such complexity is HUGE.
Prepare the entire business for the scheme manually which will itself include a large number of tasks such as cost calculation, getting HR system & payroll ready and so on.
They would have to manually assess each employee for auto enrolment.
They would have to draft & send the related mandatory communications to all employees individually on proper time.
Manage all outputs & maintain records of every key information
Why technology would be bliss
In simple words, technology will tackle the heavy lifting in auto enrolment.
Built by pension experts, the auto enrolment platforms will automate most of the complicated tasks in the process.
It will ease the cost calculation process and simplify the business preparation for auto enrolment so that the process does not disturb your regular business activities.
Would assess the entire workforce automatically in seconds and would also automate the communications
Would automatically store the records or each key information.
"Around 76% of companies setting workplace pension reported of extra administration work & around 45% are contemplating changing their auto enrolment management in near future. Given such painful experiences, we have come up with our auto enrolment platform that would simplify the whole deal for the companies", stated Carl Robertson, the CEO of auto enrolment platform Smart Pension.
Nearly 1.5 million small employers are looking forward to auto-enroll over the next couple of years. With technology backing them, they might cope better.
