National hotel chain Jupiter Hotels operates 26 sites under the Mercure brand in the UK.
Auto-enrolment is set to have a significant impact on Jupiter Hotels and the government's initial indication it would delay staging dates for organisations employing fewer than 3,000 staff caused potential difficulties.
Because of the complex make-up of its workforce, and high proportion of staff with irregular work patterns, Jupiter must monitor the earnings of entitled workers during the relevant pay reference period.
If an employee's earnings exceed the auto-enrolment threshold in that period, which they often do, the employer's duties in relation to that worker will change, bringing a greater cost burden.
Janet Gray, HR director at the hotel chain, says the lack of clarity around revised timescales for staging dates prior to January made this requirement hard to monitor. "The processes involved in preparing for auto-enrolment are far from straightforward in our case, and the absence of a target date to work to complicated matters," she says.
Read more case studies
