toots wrote:
My understanding is you as an employer have to offer it, do employees have to accept it?
Slightly more complicated. Firstly,there is a lower earnings limit that as an employer you can choose to use rather than all the employees earnings. So an employer can choose to offer the workplace pension on all earnings or just the earnings over the lower earnings limit. Secondly, ALL employees must be enrolled into the scheme regardless of their earnings. Thirdly, any employee can opt out of contributing to the scheme at any time. If a qualifying employee decides that they want to stay in the scheme then the employer contribution is 1% of the qualifying earnings. The employee contribution can be varied but is a minimum of 1% of earnings.
So if you have an employee earning say £1500 per month and the LEL is approx. £500 per month it means that the employer has to contribute 1% of the £1000 or £10.00. Now add the £10.00 from the employee and the total contribution is £20.00 per month. Now call me a cynical sod if you wish but I hardly thing £20.00 per month is going to build up to any kind of worthwhile pension pot.