A major survey found that 9 out of 10 employers who have not reached their staging date want the process delayed until pending regulation on greater pension flexibility has been completed.

The survey polled firms with 249 employees or fewer.  The staging date referred to in this survey is defined as the date by which employers must auto-enroll their eligible employees into a workplace pension.  The survey also looked to find whether the auto-enrolment of employees working in ¾ million micro employers should go ahead as planned without changes to the auto-enrolment trigger.

According to the data, 62% of employers with 10 or more employees now completely understand their timeline for auto-enrolment.  This number does continue to rise, but experts feel that this percentage is still too low.

In regards to employers that have already auto-enrolled their employees, non-joiners and new entrants have mainly been enrolled into multiemployer arrangements, including NEST.

The average opt-out percentage of employees from auto-enrolment came in at 11-15%.  The main reasons provided for the opt-out percentage were employees preferred to spend their income in other places and they simply could not afford the pension contribution.

Some other key findings from the survey included the fact that employers are still opting for face-to-face meetings over other web-based tools as a means to providing guidance to employees.  In an age of technology, this was something that caught the data analysts off guard.