Auto Enrolment: The True Consequences of Non-Compliance

By law, all UK employers are required to complete a number of mandatory duties to comply with automatic enrolment. Some of these duties include enrolling staff who meet certain eligibility criteria into a workplace pension scheme, issuing letters to all employees and paying minimum employer pension contributions.

If an employer fails to comply with auto enrolment, the Pensions Regulator will take enforcement action. Although the rollout of auto enrolment began in 2012, it is now that the true consequences of non-compliance are coming to light. 

Earlier this year, bus company Stotts Tours (Oldham) appeared at Brighton Magistrates' Court for sentencing, after pleading guilty to eight counts of wilfully failing to comply with the law on workplace pensions - the first such prosecution by The Pensions Regulator.

Stotts Tours (Oldham) should have put its staff into a workplace pension and begun paying pension contributions from June 2015. With 36 employees that should have been enrolled, the bus company and its Managing Director are now left with a bill of more than £60,000 after they admitted trying to deliberately avoid giving their staff workplace pensions.

District Judge Teresa Szagun said: "Initially Mr Stott's attitude was to bury his head in the sand. This later left him in a position where he was out of his depth."

The bus company was ordered to pay a £27,000 fine, £7,400 costs and a £120 victim surcharge. This is on top of the £14,400 in civil fines that the employer already owes for failing to comply with the law on automatic enrolment and an estimated £10,000 in backdated pension contributions for employees. Managing Director Alan Stott was also ordered to pay a £4,455 fine and a £120 victim surcharge.

Darren Ryder, TPR's Director of Automatic Enrolment, said: "Compliance with automatic enrolment remains very high and so it's extremely disappointing that a tiny minority of employers continue to flout the law by denying their staff the pensions they are entitled to.”

“This case shows the cost to employers that failing to comply with automatic enrolment can bring - a bill of tens of thousands of pounds, a criminal conviction and a damaged reputation."

Related Articles:

• Automatic Enrolment in BrightPay
• Does Automatic Enrolment apply to you?
• GDPR - Everything you need to know!

Posted byRachel HynesinAuto Enrolment

GDPR: Everything you need to know!

Free GDPR Webinars for Employers & Payroll Bureaus

Employers process large amounts of personal data, not least in relation to their customers and their own employees. Consequently, the GDPR will impact most if not all areas of the business and the impact it will have cannot be overstated. Join us for our free webinar where we will discuss what GDPR is, why employers need to take it seriously and how you can prepare for the 25th May deadline.

Employer Webinar | Bureau Webinar

How can BrightPay Connect help with GDPR?

Under the GDPR legislation, where possible the controller should be able to provide self-service remote access to a secure system which would provide the data subject with direct access to his or her personal data. BrightPay Connect is a self-service option which will give employees online remote access to view their payroll information 24/7.

Find out more | Book a demo

Free Guide: GDPR & The Future of Payroll

The guide will uncover the ins and outs of the impact of GDPR on your payroll processing, highlighting the biggest areas of concern including emailing payslips, employee consent and your legal obligation.

Download guide

Data Processor Agreement - Free Template

Whenever a data controller (e.g. a payroll bureau client) uses a data processor (e.g. payroll bureau) there needs to be a written contract in place. The contract is important so that both parties understand their responsibilities and liabilities. To assist our customers, we have created a template Data Protection Agreement which can be used by data processors as an addendum to any existing agreements.

Download Data Protection Agreement

GDPR Employee Privacy Policies

GDPR requires employers to give information to their workforce, setting out in particular the personal data (employee information) the employer holds about them, how it is used, and with whom the information is shared. The information required is more detailed than is currently required under existing data protection laws. Employers need to ensure that their employee privacy notices accurately reflect how they process employee data and are in line with GDPR requirements. GDPR compliant employee policies are available through the Bright Contracts software.

Find out more | Book a Demo

BrightPay Newsletter - Are you missing out?

GDPR is changing how we communicate with you. After May 2018, we will not be able to email you about webinar events, special offers, legislation changes, other group products and payroll related news without you subscribing to our newsletter. You will be able to unsubscribe at any time. Don’t miss out - sign up to our newsletter today!

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Still confused about GDPR? Here are some more useful links that can help:

• GDPR - Frequently Asked Questions
• How is BrightPay Preparing for GDPR
• Free GDPR Webinars
  
  

Posted byRachel HynesinGDPR

GDPR will affect your employee processing!

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force on 25th May 2018 changing the way we process data forever. The aim of the GDPR is to put greater protection on the way personal data is being processed for all EU citizens. Personal data can be anything from a name, an email address, NI number, bank details etc so as you can imagine employers process a huge amount of personal data on a daily basis. So how will the GDPR affect employers in terms of processing employee data?
 

Consent

Data in the employment context, will include information obtained from an employee during the recruitment process (regardless of whether or not they eventually got the job), it will also include the information you hold on current employees and previous employees. All this information may be saved in hard copy personnel files, held on HR systems or it could be information contained in emails or information obtained through employee monitoring.

Under GDPR your employee’s will have increased rights around their data. These rights will include:

• The Right to Access. It’s not a new concept that employees will be able to request access to the data you hold on them. However, there is a new recommendation that where possible employers should provide their employees with access to a secure self-service login where they can view data stored on them. This backs-up the whole concept of transparency and ease of access to data, which underpins the new Regulations.

• The Right to Rectification. Individuals are entitled to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete. This is an existing right and the onus is on the employer to ensure that your employee records are kept up-to-date. To help ensure you maintain up-to-date records, employers should make it easier for employees to update their data.

• The Right to be informed. Employers must be very transparent with employees about what data you hold, why and how long it is held for. Up until now it has been the common practice for many employers to include a standard clause in the employment contract regarding the processing of HR Data, under GDPR that will no longer be sufficient. Employers need to be reviewing their Employee Data Protection Policies and possibly writing new Employee Privacy Policies that go into detail on the processing of employee data.
  
  

Employee Self-Service

Under the GDPR legislation, where possible employers should be able to provide self-service remote access to a secure system which would allow employees view and manage their personal data online 24/7. Furthermore, the cloud functionality will improve your payroll processing with simple email distribution, safe document upload, easy leave management and improved communication with your employees. By introducing a self-service option, you will be taking steps to be GDPR ready.

Book a demo today to find out how you can benefit from BrightPay Connect.

Related articles:

• GDPR and BrightPay
• GDPR Data Processor Agreement
• GDPR Guides

Posted byLaura MurphyinEmployee Self ServiceGDPR

Employers: Time to adapt to the needs of millennials

Experts predict that by 2020, millennials (now aged between 21 and 35) will make up 35% of the global workforce, with ‘Generation Z’ (aged 20 and younger) making up 24%. In just two years, more than half the entire workforce population will be made up by these younger workers.

A younger workforce presents knock-on effects for the entire business. As an employer, you need to adapt to meet the expectations of this new generation of employees. Millennials are very different from the workforce that preceded them. Having grown up using the internet as second nature, these young employees are true digital natives and have never known a world without it.

Take, for instance, payroll. With payment technologies evolving, millennials have become some of the fastest adopters of mobile and digital payments. Their influence on mobile payroll adoption cannot be ignored. The simple fact is these new generation employees don’t do paper forms. They are increasingly looking for digital options to access payslips and apply for annual leave.

In recent years, employees are using holiday time differently than previous generations, with the average leave duration reduced to just 2.34 days. This alone creates new challenges for payroll and HR managers. Shorter, more frequent bursts of annual leave tend to be requested last minute rather than planned in advance. It is important for employers and HR personnel to be able to quickly review and approve leave requests.

For HR managers, there is also the added strain due to the higher turnover of millennials, with research suggesting that they last just 8 months in a job! Fortunately, we live in a mobile world, whereby online platforms can enable HR staff to manage and approve time off instantly, with more time to focus on attracting and retaining top talent.

Mobile payroll solutions, such as BrightPay Connect, are an ideal way to improve the efficiency of your business, especially as new generation workers continue to integrate smartphones into every aspect of business operations.

BrightPay Connect benefits include:

• Request annual leave - An employee opens up their phone or tablet, logs in and applies for leave online. The HR manager or employer will be alerted of the leave request and can approve the leave instantly, with the leave automatically flowing back to the payroll software. On the self-service portal, both the employee and the employer can view their number of leave days taken and remaining, along with an employee leave calendar displaying all past and future leave.
  
  
• View payslips and payroll documents - The employee can log into their self-service account to view and download all current and historic payslips and payroll documents such as P60s. For the payroll processor, there is no more printing or emailing payslips. Payslips are automatically added to the employee’s online portal each pay period eliminating employee requests for copies of past payslips.
  
  
• Access everything in one central location - Keep everything in one central place. For employees, there is just one login to view employee documents and a company noticeboard. Employers can upload documents such as employment contracts, staff handbooks, privacy policies, training manuals. The employer can choose whether the employee can view the document or not, using it as a central location for everything to do with each individual employee.
  
  

As an employer, adopting these few features favoured by millennials, along with additional employer benefits (such as an automatic cloud backup of payroll data and instant access to payroll reports), you are guaranteed to improve the efficiency of your business and payroll processing.

Book a demo today to find out how you can benefit from BrightPay Connect.

Posted byRachel HynesinBrightPay ConnectEmployee Self Service