An employer can make life easier on themselves with some forward planning by knowing how and when to use Postponement. Essentially, postponement is a way of delaying the assessment of a worker(s) at certain dates and therefore a postponement of whichever employer duty may apply.

This flexibility of postponement means an employer could use it to achieve the following outcomes:

• Smooth the process of staging, eg: automatically enrol groups of workers at different points in the three-month period.
• Align automatic enrolment with existing payroll processes, eg: to avoid calculation of contributions on part-period earnings, or to maximise the amount of the opt-out period that falls before payroll is run.
• Smooth the process of the automatic enrolment duty in respect of workers with rare spikes in earnings.
• Smooth the process of the automatic enrolment duty in respect of short-term workers who leave soon after starting work, or workers who trigger automatic enrolment just before ceasing employment.
• Facilitate contractual joining into a salary sacrifice arrangement.
• Smooth the process of fulfilling the information requirements, eg use the postponement notice to fulfil a number of the different information duties for a worker in one go.

A point to note is that postponement is not a device to defer your staging date, but as outlined above, if applied correctly it is a tool to help employers manage the different categories of worker.

For more information on Auto Enrolment contact one of our Auto Enrolment Specialists on 01226 208600.