Over the past decade or so there has been a real shift in how employers and employees view work patterns.
The sad reality of recession means that a ‘job for life’ is the exception in 2015 rather than the rule that it was only 20 or 30 years ago. However, singles, couples and families alike still need to put food on their tables and pay their bills. As a result of this social and cultural shift, there has been a significant change in how people are making up their total required income at the end of the week or at the end of the month.
Portfolio careers as they’re being hailed by some, include workers having various different employment contracts with a range of employers and some may even have self-employed income gained from the likes of freelancing or a small business that they run when they’re not in the workplace. For some, this is perceived as a negative, but in fact there are many people who crave the variety that this sort of arrangement affords them and the approach reinforces in many ways how creative and entrepreneurial the UK workforce really is.
This work pattern shift is a part of today’s society, but how does it affect automatic enrolment?
If you’re an employer who is aware that some of your employees have various sources of income you may well be asking yourself this question. Under automatic enrolment legislation, it is the employer’s responsibility to assess each member of their workforce to determine whether or not they will be included in the changes. In very broad terms when making the assessment, there are three elements that you need to take into consideration.
They are:
- The worker’s age
- Whether the worker is working or is contracted to ordinarily work in the UK
- The worker’s earnings
Establishing whether or not a worker’s age and earnings lead to them being included is relatively straightforward, however the work location can get complicated from time to time. In situations where you are uncertain as to whether a worker is working or ordinarily works in the UK, it’s always advisable to seek confirmation. So, once you have established which workers should be included, you may discover that there are certain workers with more complex situations who ask questions of you.
Thanks to the mobile workforce in today’s economy, one of the most common questions workers ask is “What happens if I have two jobs?”.
Although not complicated, in this article, we hope to demystify the confusion for you.
The rules say that each employment a member of your staff has with a different employer is treated separately when assessing whether they meet the automatic enrolment criteria. What this means is that earnings from different employments are not aggregated. As a result of this, when making the assessment of your worker, you only need to consider that member of staff’s employment with you.
So, in short, if they don’t fall into the qualifying criteria for the contract they have with you, you are not required to automatically enroll them or to investigate any other employment or sources of income they may have.
If you’re drowning in the legislation that goes with automatic enrolment and could do with a helping hand, why not get in touch? We know auto enrolment inside out can help soothe the pain.
