All employers are required by law to provide a workplace pension for certain employees. This requirement is known as automatic enrolment (or the auto-enrolment duty) and it applies to all staff who:
It is possible to postpone pension enrolment for the first 3 months of employment. To do so, the employer must write to the intern stating that they intend to postpone pension enrolment within the first 6 weeks of their internship. An internship lasting less than 3 months may not require any pension contributions. For more information on pension postponement, please and refer to the government guidelines.
From April 2019, employers must pay at least 3% of an employee’s qualifying earnings (ie their salary before tax) into this workplace pension. They must also deduct contributions of at least 5% from each eligible employee. If these levels of pension contribution are already made through an existing workplace pension scheme, there is no need to take any action, as the requirements of auto-enrolment will be fulfilled.
For more information, read Auto-enrolment and salary sacrifice.