Temporary or short-term workers and workplace pensions

Summer often means hiring extra staff, but HMRC is reminding employers to ensure any seasonal or temporary workers are assessed for automatic enrolment into workplace pensions. ​

In this article, we’ll break down who needs to be enrolled, when to enrol, and the postponement period.​

Any staff aged 22 to state pension age, earning over £192 a week or £833 a month need to be auto-enrolled into a pension scheme and receive employer contributions.​

Automatic enrolment applies even for short-term, seasonal, or temporary workers, or staff with irregular hours or income (e.g. fruit pickers), and are paid through a payroll system.​

Assessment is key. Workers should be individually assessed based on age and earnings each payroll cycle.​

Auto-enrolment should occur once the age criteria have been met and the worker first earns over the thresholds (outlined above).​

Most payroll software will automatically handle this each pay cycle and calculate the employer contributions where necessary. Some providers also have a postponement function built in.​

If you hire seasonal or temporary workers and know they will be on your payroll for no more than three months, you can use postponement to delay assessing those workers for auto-enrolment into a workplace pension scheme.​

During this postponement period you do not need to enrol the worker in a pension scheme or make contributions unless the worker asks to be put into a scheme.​

If the postponement period finishes and the worker is still employed by your business, you must enrol them if age and earnings criteria are met.​

If you hire any temporary staff over the busy summer period (or any other time of year), don’t overlook their workplace pension. Non-compliance can lead to a warnings notice with a deadline to comply.​

Make sure you understand your obligations as an employer and utilise payroll functionality to make compliance a breeze.​