Whether you're an architect, a newsagent, have a personal care assistant or a nanny, if you employ just one person then you're an employer and have automatic enrolment duties under workplace pensions law.
Your legal duties for automatic enrolment begin on the day your first member of staff started working for you – this is called your duties start date.
There are tasks that you’ll need to carry out straight away to meet your duties on time.
First, you’ll need to assess your staff to see if they met the age and earnings criteria to be put into a pension scheme on your duties start date. If they did you must put them into a scheme and pay into it. Even if you don’t have any staff to put into a scheme you will still have duties.
Then you must write to all your staff, within six weeks of your duties start date, to tell them how automatic enrolment applies to them. If you’re more than six weeks after your duties start date you’ll need to do this straight away.
Finally, you must complete a declaration of compliance online to tell us how you’ve met your legal duties. You must do this within five months of your duties start date.
Use the online tool on The Pensions Regulator website to work out what you need to do and to find out about your ongoing duties.