Talking Head: Nest's Helen Dean explains how the mastertrust is working to align payroll and pension systems to smooth the auto-enrolment journey for smaller employers.
We are embarking on a new leg of the auto-enrolment journey. The volume of employers willstart to rise exponentially, with 1.3m staging between now and 2018.
Meanwhile, their experience of pensions will be much less than those that have come before. The challenge of helping them stage smoothly and effectively is a significant one.
Instead of asking hundreds of thousands of micro employers to spend hours learning about pension administration systems and navigating technical information, we should modify our approach to fit with what they already understand
Innovation, particularly in technology, can surely ease the path to success.
Helping over a million employers meet their duties means first and foremost understanding things from their perspective.
Instead of asking hundreds of thousands of micro employers to spend hours learning about pension administration systems and navigating technical information, we should modify our approach to fit with what they already understand.
Web services
Smaller employers might be less likely to have experience of managing pension schemes, but there are very few employers that do not have to deal with payroll in some shape or form.
Over the past few years we have been working with the payroll industry to understand how we can better align payroll and pensions systems in the interests of employers.
Nest is currently in testing and development mode with payroll software providers around the country for a new data integration process known as web services.
The idea is to enable employers’ payroll software to pick up and crunch all the data needed for auto-enrolment and send it across to their pension provider automatically.
Essentially, employers should be able to manage auto-enrolment entirely through their everyday payroll package.
We are still developing this with the payroll industry, but aim to have it up and running ahead of the peaks in the staging profile early next year.
It is an exciting initiative that we would not be able to achieve without the hard work and dedication of many partners, and we hope our efforts will make it easier for other schemes to do the same.
Small and micro employers have told us they need all the help they can have to get auto-enrolment right and give their workers a boost for the future.
We are doing our best to answer that call, as are others across the industry.
With everyone focussed on the same goal, we are confident this next leg of the auto-enrolment journey will be just as successful as the last.
Helen Dean is executive director of product and marketing at Nest
