Auto-enrolment rules have been in place for 10 years now and under them, employers have a duty to assess whether they have any eligible staff who should be placed in a workplace pension scheme and make appropriate contributions for each person. These duties start on the day an employer takes on their first member of staff and apply for every payday after that.

The rules require that workers who are aged over 22 and who earn over £192 a week, £833 a month or over £10,000 a year are automatically enrolled in a pension scheme unless they have opted out. The employer is required to contribute 3% of the worker’s earnings to the pension and the worker 5%.

All employers have these obligations and they apply not just to permanent staff but also to seasonal and temporary workers. However, it is often more difficult to make the assessment for seasonal workers as they may start or end their employment in the middle of a pay cycle, have variable wages and hours and only work for short periods of time.

To help employers comply with these rules, the Pensions Regulator provides some helpful guides on managing auto-enrolment for:

• Employing seasonal or temporary staff
• Staff employed on irregular hours or incomes
• Assessing staff whose hours and pay varies

Two ways of helping to manage these obligations as recommended by the Regulator include:

• Software – most software will help make the assessment about who needs to be in or out of auto-enrolment, so choosing the appropriate software to your circumstances is key. 
• Postponement – this allows employers to defer making decisions about whether or not an employee needs to be enrolled for a period of three months. This can be helpful for seasonal workers as it allows a decision to be taken when more details about their earnings and hours are known, but workers must be advised in writing that postponement is being applied to them.