More than 6 million people are now enrolled into a workplace pension

March saw Workplace Pension Reforms pass an incredible 6 million workers being placed into a workplace pension scheme via auto enrolment.

The Pensions Regulator are now stating that, nearly four years in to Workplace Pension Reform, more than 100,000 businesses have now staged for auto enrolment, and that this covers over 6 million workers across the UK.

IRIS are proud to provide payroll software solutions to around 10% of UK businesses who have staged for auto enrolment, assessing over 626,000 employees each pay period.

The first businesses began staging for auto enrolment back in October 2012 with the UK’s largest employers in terms of employees, now, nearly four years later, the UK’s small businesses are due to begin their staging process. Over the next 12 months, between April 2016 and April 2017, The Pensions Regulator estimates that around 570,000 small businesses will stage for auto enrolment. The Pensions Regulator visited IRIS in February to speak to us about auto enrolment compliance and the latest facts and figures, you can read the blog here.

Director of automatic enrolment at The Pensions Regulator, Charles Counsell, had this to say: "The roll out of automatic enrolment has proved successful so far, with more than 90% of the first small employers required to put their staff into a workplace pension now complying with the law.

"We are finding a minority of small employers are leaving preparations too late. Don't get caught out – use our website to nominate a contact. This only takes around five minutes and means we can contact you with all you need to know to get ready."

Minister for Pensions, Baroness Ros Altmann, said: "It is brilliant to see so many millions of people automatically enrolling into a workplace pension. So far it has been those working for big firms, now the challenge is to make sure small employers set up pensions too, so their employees get to enjoy this major financial benefit.

“Our pensions reforms are starting a culture of saving which is making pension provision the norm across the UK."

If you are a small business and you are unsure what to do where auto enrolment is concerned, you can download our free guides which cover a range of auto enrolment subjects. Our latest guide, “Are you prepared for auto enrolment?” covers research gathered by IRIS on 303 small and medium-sized businesses to see how prepared for auto enrolment they were for 2016. The guide also includes our hints and tips for small businesses who are due to stage but are unsure about what to do.

You can download your free 11-page guide using the button below.

Download my free auto enrolment guide