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November 21, 2014

Firms go “above and beyond” on auto-enrolment

Firms go “above and beyond” on auto-enrolmentOver two thirds (68%) of employers have automatically enrolled eligible workers into a pension scheme and of these, many are contributing significantly more than is legally required.

A new CIPD survey has found that almost half (46%) report that the proportion of eligible workers who so far have opted out from pension saving is less than 10%, which is less than originally forecast by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The CIPD’s report – Labour Market Outlook: Focus on Pension Auto-Enrolment 2014 – questioned 1,080 employers and found that the average employer contribution to the pension schemes of newly enrolled workers is 5.6% of salary while the average employee contribution is 4.7%. This compares with the legal minimum contribution requirement for employers and employees of 1% each.

In the private sector, the typical employer contribution is 4.5% and the average worker contribution is 3.9%. Opt-out rates among private sector firms are 7.7% (compared to 7.4% overall). By employer size, the opt-out rate is higher among large organisations (7.9%) than SMEs (5.9%).

Charles Cotton, the CIPD’s performance and reward adviser, said: “So far, pension automatic enrolment has been a success. Employers are in many cases going above and beyond the requirements and the majority of workers have opted to stay in the scheme.”

However, many SMEs have yet to reach their staging date. The CIPD survey found that 48% of these businesses anticipate that they will have to limit future pay growth to fund it; while 19% say they will cut back on hiring or even cut jobs. Just 26% think that they will be able to simply absorb the new costs and 18% think that there will be no additional expense.

Of those who have already gone through automatic enrolment, however, 22% report that there are no significant extra costs, while 38% report that they have been able to absorb the additional expense.

Cotton said: “It’s concerning that many micro, small and medium-sized employers think that they may have to cut or restrict salary growth or reduce hiring to pay for automatic enrolment. Our survey last year found many organisations predicting negative consequences in terms of employment and pay due to the pension changes, and these do not appear to have materialised.”

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