Since 2012 we’ve helped companies of all shapes and sizes manage and continue to manage their automatic enrolment obligations.

We’ve guided them through the regulation, took on many of the tasks we needed to complete in order to help them comply, communicated and educated their staff and provided updates as and when regulation changed.

We also spend a decent amount of our time sharing ideas with fellow professionals and trying to provide other ways employers can solve their automatic enrolment challenge more efficiently than consulting with us.

It’s the reason I wrote “Three Circles – a practical guide to automatic enrolment” (you can find the recently released 2nd edition here)

and

It’s the reason I was part of the AE in a Box team which acts as a project management tool for employers to use.

You see consulting directly with us won’t be right for all employers. Some employers will want to do it themselves or liaise with their accountant or payroll bureau. Others will want to comply using “Three Circles” as guidance.

However one thing employers should not do is ignore the fact they need to follow the specific tasks to ensure that they comply.

What concerns us is we’ve been hearing some stories recently of employers out in the marketplace who have been completing their declaration of compliance without following the process of proper compliance.

Now whilst this might mean that you fly under the radar of the regulator temporarily the fact is that by completing your declaration of compliance you are confirming a number of things.

Firstly you understand what you need to do to comply with automatic enrolment and you’ve gone throughout the process of communicating with your staff.

Secondly you’ve put a pension scheme in place and are managing your ongoing automatic enrolment obligations sensibly and thirdly the information you have put in place is correct.

Now we’ve only heard whispers of this practice occurring so don’t know how widespread it is. However let me give you a piece of friendly advice. If you’re trying to comply with automatic enrolment please do it properly.

The time, effort, energy and costs associated with complying successfully is nothing compared to what it might take to undo an incorrect declaration of compliance.

I know complying with automatic enrolment involves a bit of work. However by doing this work up front and not trying to short cut the process the odds are you’ll save yourself plenty of time in the long run…

If you need some help feel free to call us on 01708 606 202 or email us at info@aeinabox.co.uk.