The first staging date is now upon us for the government's new auto-enrolment legislation, which will soon affect every business in the UK that has employees - even if there’s only one! 

You've probably seen the television advert but all business owners with employees will be required by law to provide pension schemes for them, whether the employee wants to take up such an offer or not. In order to comply, employers will also have to provide a number of annual reports outlining the steps taken towards compliance, which will not only be time consuming but is also likely to get very confusing.

Many large firms will simply rely on their HR departments to handle the work but owners of smaller businesses will have to do it themselves and this could prove a daunting task, especially when there are countless other jobs that need doing in order to run the business. If you're a business owner, you should have been informed of your staging date but even if that's not for a few years you should still act as soon as possible to ensure that you're fully prepared.