Publishing and events company Informa, which has 3,200 staff in the UK, operates a three-month waiting period before employees can join its group personal pension (GPP) scheme, which is managed by Friends Life.
About 50% of its workforce belongs to the GPP, to which Informa makes a matching contribution of between 3% and 5% of qualifying earnings. Thomas Humphris, head office HR and UK reward director at Informa, says: "Our starting auto-enrolment date is 1 July 2013. We may bring that forward to 1 January 2013 because we do our flexible benefits processing in January. Employees have a flex window at the end of November and start of December.
"The big costs will stem from redesign and behind-the-scenes development, so we are processing and reporting properly and issuing alerts. It means making changes to the Vebnet benefits portal, our SAP HR system and payroll, which is handled by ADP. There will be significant hidden costs it will not be cheap. I reckon about £20,000 on development costs for the HR system alone."
Informa will also use actuaries to calculate costed options.
The GPP operates via pensions salary sacrifice, so the company will offer another option for employees who do not want to take part in this or for whom it is not suitable, says Humphris.
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