3. LA POESÍA DE JUAN LARREA Y LA TRADUCCIÓN
3.2. Aproximación al corpus
3.2.3 Los textos de trabajo de Gerardo Diego
enrolment
This section focuses on those employers who had passed their staging date, but not yet begun automatic enrolment. For the larger employers, this gap was typically brought about by the organisation having chosen to postpone automatic enrolment.47 For the smaller employers it was more often due to the organisation having no employees that were eligible for automatic enrolment. In most cases, those staged employers who had not yet begun automatic enrolment expected to begin automatically enrolling in late 2013/early 2014.
The numbers of employers in the survey sample who had staged, but not yet begun
automatic enrolment was relatively small, and so the amount of detail that can be reported for this group is limited. However, we are able to report on their main intentions.
5.4.1 Likely enrolment destinations and contribution rates
Almost all of those staged employers who had not yet begun automatic enrolment had at least one workplace pension scheme already in place and the vast majority (95 per cent) had at least some active members within that scheme. Most (89 per cent) of those
47 Employers are permitted to postpone automatic enrolment of a worker for a period of up to three months. This can be applied at the employer’s staging date, when an individual begins employment and when an individual becomes eligible for automatic enrolment. There are also transitional provisions which allow employers to defer automatic enrolment, for certain workers who are eligible to join a Defined Benefits Pension Scheme, until 2017.
employers with existing members said that they were likely to retain these employees within their existing scheme, rather than enrolling them into a new qualifying scheme (Table 5.5).
A similar picture was apparent among those employers that had already begun automatic enrolment (see Table 5.4).
A substantial proportion (37 per cent) of employers that had staged, but not yet begun, automatic enrolment were unsure as to where they would enrol non-members or new employees. Among those that did state a likely destination, the most common expectation was that non-members and new employees would be enrolled into their existing scheme;
overall 43 per cent of employers thought that this would be their likely action (Table 5.5). A further ten per cent expected to enrol non-members and new employees into a single new qualifying scheme and 11 per cent expected to enrol them into a combination of different schemes.
Around one-fifth (21 per cent) of those staged employers who had not begun automatic enrolment therefore expected to set up a new qualifying scheme for non-members or new employees. Only half of these employers (49 per cent) expressed a view on the type of scheme that they were likely to set up, but most of those that did (41 per cent of the total) expected to set up a NEST scheme. A further six per cent expected to set up an SHP or GPP scheme and two per cent expected to set up an occupational scheme.48
Table 5.5 Likely enrolment destinations for staged organisations that had not yet begun automatic enrolment, by type of employee, 2013
Column percentages (organisations)
Destination Existing members Non-members/
new employees
Retain/enrol all in existing scheme 89 43
All into a new qualifying schemea 0 10
Enrol into a combination of schemes 1 11
Other/Don’t know 11 37
Weighted base 19 21
Unweighted base 135 152
Base: All private sector organisations that had staged but not yet begun automatic enrolment.
Notes:
a. New qualifying schemes may include NEST.
b. The column for ‘All non-members/new employees’ includes 38 organisations that were not providing pensions before beginning automatic enrolment.
Turning to employers’ intended contribution rates we find that, as in the case of automatically enrolling employers, most staged employers who had yet to begin automatic enrolment intended to contribute the same rate for all employees after any phasing-in period: 91 per cent said that all employees would receive the same rate, with nine per cent saying that it
would differ.49 Again, larger firms were more likely to be planning variable rates, such that those firms that were planning different rates employed 30 per cent of all employees in staged firms that had yet to begin automatic enrolment.
Employers were then asked to specify the average rate at which they were likely to
contribute for their employees after any phasing-in period. If we combine this with estimates of the numbers of eligible employees currently in each organisation, we can infer that around two-thirds (66 per cent) of these organisations’ eligible employees are likely to receive an employer contribution of three per cent, around one in seven (15 per cent) are likely to receive a contribution of between three and six per cent, and around one-fifth (19 per cent) are likely to receive a contribution of six per cent or more. As in the case of automatically enrolling firms, these estimates should be treated with some caution as it was possible to make such calculations among only three quarters of relevant firms.
5.4.2 Likely use of waiting periods for new employees
Staged firms that had not yet begun automatic enrolment were asked whether they had adopted a waiting period for new employees.50 Around one in eight (13 per cent) had adopted such a waiting period. As with automatically enrolling firms, this was more common among larger firms than smaller one, with those that had adopted a waiting period accounting for 68 per cent of employees in all staged firms that had yet to begin automatic enrolment.
Among this group of firms, the most popular reason for adopting a waiting period was to avoid enrolling employees who leave employment quickly after starting (including as casual or temporary employees) (30 per cent). The second most popular reason – which was by far the most popular among automatically enrolling firms – was to allow a probationary period to pass (mentioned by 24 per cent, compared with 70 per cent for automatically enrolling firms with a waiting period). The only other reason cited by more than ten per cent of employers was to stagger the administrative task of automatic enrolment by enrolling employees in stages (15 per cent). Less than one-tenth (9 per cent) of firms said they would use a waiting period to save on contribution costs.
As in the case of automatically enrolling firms, waiting periods invariably applied to all new employees (99 per cent of cases) and were typically of the same length for all employees (91 per cent of cases). The most popular length of waiting period was again three months (98 per cent of cases).
49 We do not present any information on the likely incidence of phasing in because of routing complications within the questionnaire which mean that some employers were asked a retrospective, rather than a prospective, question.
50 It should be noted that the question was asked in a retrospective form, even though this group of firms had not yet begun automatic enrolment.