Independent financial adviser and employee benefits consultant LEBC auto-enrolled its workforce a year before its official staging date to ensure it fully understood the practicalities of the project, in preparation for helping its own clients through the journey.
LEBC auto-enrolled 40 employees in its pension scheme on 1 July and so far just one has opted out. It introduced the People’s Pension from B&CE for auto-enrolment purposes, which it offers alongside its existing group personal pension plan (GPP).
Glynn Jones, divisional director at LEBC, says: “We have gained experience from understanding staging for ourselves and that it is critical to have the various disciplines working together: payroll, pensions, finance and HR. We have staged a few employer clients now, and this experience has assisted us.”
LEBC communicated its auto-enrolment scheme via email. Messages focused on how auto-enrolment works, the identity of its pension scheme provider and what membership of the scheme means for employees, as well as on the fact that staff that remained in the scheme would see pension contributions deducted from their salary.
The organisation and its employees are each required to contribute 3% of an employee’s pay, which will increase to 5% for each over time.
Jones says the process was probably easier for LEBC because of its specialist industry knowledge. “But once we made the decision to stage early, it took four months of quite intense activity,” he adds. “We know our stuff, and it still took us that sort of time and activity.”