Guide to Auto Enrolment
Hertfordshire County Council
Auto Enrolment – From an Employer point of view
Ashleigh Calf
A focused proactive and organised HR professional with proven results in delivering operational people management strategies.Project experience acquired in the private and public sector.Ability to manage difficult situations in pressurised and challenging environments through effective communication and the ability to influence with a positive approach.
HR Services Manager
Hertfordshire County Council
Government Agency; 10,001+ employees; Government Administration industry
April 2005 – Present (7 years 7 months)
I have responsibility for managing, monitoring and continuously improving the service delivered to the business by the service providers, with specific emphasis on HR and Pension processes. This includes expert advice to the business on statutory pension changes for the Local Government Pension Scheme, and Firefighters Pension Schemes.
I work within the Workforce Strategy team, working on major projects including the changes to the Local Government Pension Scheme, the rollout of Employee and Manager Self Service, Recruitment safe staffing, and led on an employment contracts project to streamline contracts for circa 9,000 staff and standardise and automate production. Most recently I have managed the Real TimeInformation and Auto Enrolment projects.
HR Manager
Tesco Stores Ltd
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; TESCO; Retail industry
1988 – 2005 (16 years)
As a HR Project Manager at Head Office for 3 years I designed, implemented and reviewed various projects within the Company Values programme and implemented ways to align the Retail Performance Management process with the rest of the business. I supported a company wide change programme, offering specialist knowledge on spans of control and headcount information. I also managed the online 360 degree feedback system.
As a Personnel Manager in Store and Regional expert for 9 years, I was responsible for resolving a wide range of HR issues, including coaching and development of staff and accountable for delivering key performance indicators relating to people and customer service issues. This included managing a £3.5M wage budget.
As a Personnel and Training Executive at Head Office for 1 year, I was responsible for providing generalist support to the Productivity and Site Research departments with the main focus on Graduate recruitment, including assessing verbal and numerical reasoning.
Panel Member
British Broadcasting Corporation
1982 – 1988 (6 years)
I was part of a Panel (the BBC in-house temporary cover), moved around the Corporation, working in production and management areas of the business.
Additional Information
I lived and studied abroad for 14 years in Germany and Hong Kong. I attended St. George’s College Hong Kong and as a mature student attended Middlesex University where I studied a Business and Finance Qualification and my CIPD.
I speak native German and volunteer within the community, including three years as an Executive Member of Mencap.
Auto Enrolment – From an Employer point of view
Part 1 - Scoping and planning stage
As one of the largest employers in Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire County Council are one of the early adopters of auto enrolment with a staging (start) date set at 1 January 2013. (If you do not know your staging date you can find out by visiting the pensions regulator website www.tpr.gov.uk/7-steps. Your staging date will be governed by the size of your PAYE scheme).
Auto Enrolment at Hertfordshire is led by HR, and I’ve been working with key stakeholders within HR, Finance, Payroll, Pensions, the Payroll technical team and HR Transactions team. I have pulled together a project plan and arranged monthly meetings to discuss progress. If you would like a copy of the project plan, please let me know.
The following outlines the first steps we have taken to prepare for our go live date and also how we made employer decisions allowable within the regulations to fit with our workforce of approximately 32,000 staff, made up of schools, non schools, firefighters and NHS staff.
We started with a full analysis of the workforce, and the interpretation and understanding of the regulations around who is an eligible jobholder and who is an entitled worker.
To make our arrangements straightforward, we agreed that all employees could be enrolled into the relevant scheme, therefore we do not treat any eligible jobholder or worker differently and within the regulations we can do this as we offer a defined benefit scheme. It is important for you to understand the differences between the criteria of eligibility and whether you can make this choice or not and more information can be found via the pensions regulator website.
There is a discretion called a transitional arrangement, which allows for a part delay of auto enrolment for some schemes, and we took the decision to delay auto enrolment ‘for eligible jobholders who meet certain conditions and who have previously opted out’. We took this decision onaccount of the size and diversity of our workforce and agreed that a staggered approach would be best for us. We are therefore making use of the transitional period for these staff only until 30 September 2017.
At our go live date we will be opting in all new starters, anyone who becomes 22 years of age, and anyone who earns for the first time above £8105 per annum or £676 per month, this sudden move in salary taking the employee above £8105 might happen because they have been promoted or have completed additional hours, and these need to be closely monitored.
To help with the above we are also automating the HR and payroll system to eradicate manual intervention. This enables us to automatically generate letters as the staff member meets the criteria. In addition it enables us to run regular reports, and show due diligence to the pensions regulator.
A full workforce analysis of staff has taken place; those aged 22 and state pension age, working in the UK and earning above £8,105 per annum or £676 per month. We have shared with Finance colleagues and Line Managers worse case scenario employer on-costs to help with budget monitoring. Although this is speculative it is something that everyone is interested in.
Communication has been key in the planning stage. The emphasis on cost effective, clear and timely communication to our staff has been paramount. A large majority of our staff are easy to reach via e-mail allowing us to utilise this cost efficient approach. However we had to consider other options for hard to reach areas. I wanted to make sure that when the individual letters are sent in the first week of December 2012, four weeks prior to our go live date, that it doesn’t come as a shock and all staff has heard about auto enrolment and what it means to them.
Therefore, as an additional step all staff have been split into categories and will receive various forms of targeted group communication. This has included news items in departmental newsletters, intranet news items, posters, team meetings, e-bulletins. During December 2012, we will be running Roadshows at all main sites to raise awareness and to answer queries following staff receiving their letters.
I found a wealth of information published by the Pensions regulator on auto-enrolment with detailed guidance which is straight forward and some guidance that requires individual organisations to make decisions to suit their workforce. For more information please see pensionsregulator.gov.uk.
In the next update…Template Letters and Fact sheets.