Since October 2012 businesses have been required to automatically enrol eligible “jobholders’ into a pension scheme.
Businesses must pay a minimum level of pension contributions for each employee.
A jobholder will include permanent, fixed-term and temporary employees, as well as agency workers.
While there are a few categories of individuals that are excluded from the employer duty most employees will have to be auto-enrolled.
Small businesses are not exempt from the auto-enrolment requirements.

A business can use an occupational or personal pension scheme if it meets statutory quality requirements.
Businesses can also enrol jobholders in the National Employment Savings Trust, a central defined contribution scheme set up by the government.

Employees may opt out of either scheme, but only once they have been automatically enrolled.
Businesses are required to automatically re¬enrol eligible jobholders every three years after they first become subject to the statutory employer duties.

Jobholders will be automatically enrolled once they reach a statutory earnings trigger (£10,000 in 2020/21).
Contributions are based on earnings between the National Insurance lower earnings limit (£6,240 in 2020/21) and the upper earnings limit (£50,000 in 2020/21).
Employees who have been automatically enrolled will continue to pay contributions until their earnings drop below the earnings trigger (unless they opt out).
Any employees with earnings between these thresholds will be able to opt in and receive an employer contribution.

The age band for eligibility is between 22 and the state pension age.
Retaining the state pension age as the upper age limit gives people access to pension saving during their normal working lives and avoids automatically enrolling people for whom saving is no longer the right option.

Certain statutory information must be provided by employers to members who are being automatically enrolled within certain statutory timescales.
The information requirements are detailed and vary depending on the circumstances, for example, whether postponement is being used, but include the right to opt in or opt out.

A business can use a three-month waiting period to avoid automatically enrolling employees who leave employment soon after joining, for example, seasonal or temporary workers.
This will also allow businesses to align enrolment dates with their own payroll systems.

Employers must automatically re-enrol eligible jobholders who were previously auto-enrolled, but who opted-out, into an automatic enrolment scheme.
The automatic re-enrolment date will be around three years after the employer’s staging date and can be any date selected by the employer within a six month window running from three months before the third anniversary date to the end of three months afterwards.

Some employers may prefer to simply enrol all new joiners into a qualifying scheme when they start work under their employment contracts to avoid the administrative burden associated with assessing the workforce.

A defined contribution scheme can be certified as meeting the quality requirements if it satisfies any one of the following criteria.
A minimum 9% contribution of pensionable pay (including a 4% employer contribution).
A minimum 8% contribution of pensionable pay (with a 3% employer contribution) provided pensionable pay constitutes at least 85% of the total pay bill.
A minimum 7% contribution of pensionable pay (with a 3% employer contribution) provided that the total pay bill is pensionable.