Employers should identify the budget they have for pensions auto-enrolment at the very beginning of the process, said Lawrence Cramer (pictured), head of HR at the YHA, during an interview with Clare Bettelley, associate editor of Employee Benefits.
He said: “As a charity, budgets are really important to us, and we operate completely on small budgets.
“One of the things that any organisation needs to consider is, whatever budget it has got, where it is going to spend that money. It is really important it identifies that at the very beginning; otherwise, like any project, budgets are going to overrun.”
Employers should focus their budget on the resources they need to comply with the auto-enrolment legislation, focus on putting the right software in place and consider how they are going to communicate to employees, added Cramer.
YHA has 1,300 employees across 156 locations in the UK so it faced challenges in communicating with staff and keeping its cost under control.
Cramer added: “Employers should have a clear plan of how many people they are going to need to communicate with, because that is the size of the issue they face.
“They should also have a clear budget, and overestimate that budget, just in case.”
