Jelf Employee Benefits launches auto-enrolment guide for SMEs

Jelf Employee Benefits has launched a free downloadable guide to provide information to small and medium-sized employers (SMEs) on auto-enrolment.

The online guide is based on the consultancy’s hands-on experience dealing with large organisations and auto-enrolment.

It is divided into nine sections with three headline messages for SMEs:

  • Sort out your data: Auto-enrolment expose any holes and inaccuracies in employee data.
  • Give yourself enough time: If SMEs don’t plan ahead, they won’t meet their staging date deadline.
  • Seek advice from an experienced firm: Advisors have helped large employers through auto-enrolment and can use their experience to advise through the process.

Jon Baker, head of marketing, financial services at Jelf Employee Benefits, said: “Having had the organisations with the largest numbers of employees go through auto-enrolment, we’re now about to witness the biggest wave of firms start to tackle it.

“In our experience, larger organisations are generally more accustomed to complying with new legislation and providing a pension scheme, but the advent of auto-enrolment means smaller employers might be in unfamiliar territory.  Auto-enrolment is not something they can play at; get it wrong and the financial penalties could be crippling.”

“We’ve been called in a few times when organisations have been slow to address auto-enrolment or approached it incorrectly and got themselves into a bit of a mess.

“We’ve written this guide because we’re at the coalface of auto-enrolment, have experience and believe that it’s much better to get things right from the outset than pick up the pieces afterwards.”