Yes, a waiting period can be applied to delay the date you need to automatically assess and enrol your workers into a qualifying pension schheme.
You must advise your workers of any waiting periods within six weeks from your duty start date and communicate to them when they can expect to be assessed and enrolled. If you have opted to use the EnrolPay Auto-enrolment (AE) module employees will automatically be forwarded this information via their 'MyAccess' employee dashboard.
Eligible jobholders and workers with the right to opt in can still ask to join during this time. This means you’ll still need to have your scheme set up and ready by your original staging date or duty start date.
You can opt to use a waiting period for up to three months from your staging date or duty start date, however, The final day of any waiting period you apply can be no later than:.
- three months after the date your employer duties start, or
- three months after an eligible jobholder’s first day of employment, or
- three months after a worker first becomes eligible for automatic enrolment.
If any worker asks to join within the waiting period you must enrol them straight away.
You might want to use a waiting period for a number of reasons, for instance:
- to synchronise enrolment dates with the start of a pay period. This may be useful if your payroll is based on tax periods
- if you have seasonal or short-term workers who’ll be with you for less than three months