For Auto-Enrolment (AE) purposes, an employer only needs to assess and enrol UK workers into a scheme. Therefore, as an employer, you need to assess if a worker is working or ordinarily works in the UK under their contract.
Working in the UK: If a worker works wholly in the UK, then they can be considered to be working in the UK. By working wholly in the UK, The Pensions Regulator means:
- the worker’s contract provides for the worker to be based at a location in the UK, and the worker does, in practice, work all the time in the UK, and
- there is no simultaneous employment relationship between the worker and an employer outside the UK (e.g. the worker is not someone who has been sent to the UK by an affiliated employer, for example on a secondment.)
Ordinarily working in the UK: Where a worker is not wholly working in the UK (the work they do is also done outside of the UK), it will need to be established if the worker ordinarily works in the UK.
In most cases, workers who fall into this category will be workers who do not have one fixed workplace (for example, they move around in their work). To decide if a worker ordinarily works in the UK, an employer needs to consider:
- If the worker is resident in the UK
- where the worker begins and ends their work
- where the worker's headquarters in
- whether they pay NI and or tax in the UK
- the currency they are paid in
- the worker's contract of employment
- seconded workers
More details can be found here.
If you have a worker that should be exempt from AE due to not working in the UK, please enter that into Husky's system so that the worker is not assessed for Auto-Enrolment.
