Auto-enrolment legislation deemed unnecessarily complex

Auto-enrolment legislation is considered unnecessarily complex or difficult by HR, payroll and finance professionals, according to research by Ceridian.

Its survey of more than 600 HR, payroll and finance professionals found that 76% considered auto-enrolment legislation to be either unnecessarily complex or difficult.

Of these, 22% of respondents considered auto-enrolment legislation to be unnecessarily complex and 54% rated it to be difficult. Of the latter, 39% had plans in place to address the difficulties.

The research also found that:

• 7% thought considered the legislation is easily manageable, but had yet to reach their staging date.
• 7% only allowed less than three months prior to their their staging date to ensure auto-enrolment compliance.
• 17% allowed between three and six months before their staging date to ensure they were auto-enrolment compliant.
• 38% allowed between six and 12 months before their staging date to ensure auto-enrolment compliance, and 30% allowed over a year to ensure they met auto-enrolment requirements.
• 9%, however,  did not know what time period they had allocated to ensure their organisation was auto-enrolment compliant.

David Woodward, chief product and innovation officer at Ceridian UK said: “I think anyone with experience of auto-enrolment would be concerned at the above results.

“Our experience with many organisations is that the cross-organisation planning required to ensure compliance is slowing down employer planning and decision-making, adding to the time pressures to meet staging date deadlines.”