Archive for the ‘HR’ Category
Early feedback from NEST CEO on new pension rules
Speaking at the Institute of Directors Conference recently , Tim Jones, CEO of NEST said:
‘From our experience with employers, it is clear that they need to give themselves as much time as possible to get ready. We recommend up to 18 months and advise they pull together a team from across the organisation who can help meet their duties.’
NEST is working with over 300 employers, with 100 of these being large employers in the first stages of implementing automatic enrolment. These include household names such as BBC, BT, McDonalds, NPower, Iceland and Travelodge, and employers from a wide range of sectors, such as Barchester Healthcare, Compass Group and Mitchells and Butlers.
Tim also announced four more names of employers to have chosen NEST for their automatic enrolment duties, namely: Balfour Beatty, Four Seasons Health Care, Spirit Pub Company and The Open University.
Reflecting further on lessons learnt so far, Tim drew attention to the need for employers to make sure they work with their payroll providers and in-house teams to get the ‘right data in the right format’.
Comment from 44 Financial:
It’s clear that to successfully deliver a compliant auto-enrolment project medium size employers will need between 12 and 18 months. If you have a staging date in 2014 you need to have started the project by now.
Auto-Enrolment–Webinar
It’s crucial that the way that automatic enrolment interacts with existing employment contracts is fully understood. The key difference is that contractual enrolment requires a worker’s consent to be enrolled into a pension scheme, whereas automatic enrolment does not.
Join Neil Esslemont and Andy Nicholls from the regulator’s industry liaison team as they outline the different processes for contractual and automatic enrolment.
This free webinar, on Friday 22 March at 11.00am, will include the relevance of opting out and postponement to these processes, communicating membership to workers, and identifying whether an existing scheme qualifies for automatic enrolment. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions.
Only 8% of Asda employees opt-out
According to the supermarket giant only 8 per cent of its eligible workforce opted-out of the new rules on pension enrolment. Asda was one of the first UK employers to reach it’s staging date.
According to Asda the helpline they set up got calls from about 3% of the workforce during the opt-out period. Asda had conducted a comprehensive communication programme designed to explain the changes and emphasise that this was not a pay cut.
This level of opt-out is well below the 20-30% predictions we have seen. Only last month the consultants to the largest employers who had reached their staging date were quoting opt-out rates of up to 10%.
Supporting your employees suffering from cancer
Advising on employee benefits can be a bitter sweet experience at times. When dealing with claims you see the worse side of human frailty. However, despite this we can still make a positive difference to an employee who is ill, or their dependants if they die.
One of the toughest things to deal with for an employer can be working out how best to support an employee who is affected by cancer while at the same time meeting the needs of your organisation. Macmillan Cancer Support has produced a pack of free resources especially for HR professionals, to provide you with all the information and practical advice you’ll need.
This toolkit includes expert guidance about minimising the impact of cancer on your organisation and all the individuals concerned, top tips for line managers to support their staff, and information to share with employees who’ve been diagnosed with cancer or who are caring for someone with cancer.
We strongly recommend that you have this information to hand. Visit the Macmillan website to order your free toolkit today.
Steve Clark
Photo Courtesy of Flickr: ind{yeah}
Salary Sacrifice–Minimum Time?
We’ve been getting a number of questions from our clients regarding the minimum amount of time that a salary sacrifice agreement must be in place for.
This has come into sharper focus when looking at the new pension rules from October 2012 that will mean that employers have to automatically enrol employees into a workplace pension. Well those all round good eggs at HM Revenue & Customs have kindly produced an FAQ on the subject.
You can read the document here in all it’s glory.
The interesting part is when they discuss the new rules. HMRC says:
“Consequently, it is not necessary to stipulate a period for which the arrangement must be entered into or to set out "lifestyle changes" in relation to salary sacrifice for the workplace pension scheme.”
That’s good news for employers who have often struggled to define “lifestyle changes” to their employees. It also helps to reassure employers that they won’t be liable for a tax bill if the employee opts out of salary sacrifice.
It’s worth remembering that salary sacrifice needs to be established carefully and is a balance between changing your employees contracts and altering your benefit contributions. As always, it’s worth making sure that you get some advice when setting up a new arrangement.
Steve Clark