According to a YouGov survey commissioned by a recruitment company, many employers feel burdened by red tape and struggle to keep abreast of new regulations, which must be a blow to the Government as it tries to maintain its red tape challenge.
The survey found only 9 percent of respondents felt that existing business legislation is fit for purpose, with 18 percent saying that it is over engineered and even fewer believing that it provides businesses with the flexibility they need.
One aspect of this is on recruitment, as 40 percent of those polled said that regulations deter them from taking on new staff and 16 percent felt nervous about dismissing underperforming employees, although the survey was almost certainly conducted before the recent announcement from Business Secretary Vince Cable about capped tribunal payouts and dismissal agreements.
However, one of the most worrying results from the survey was that only 37 percent of those surveyed said that they felt ready for the changes to pensions that come into force next month, while more than a quarter said that they weren’t even aware of the legislation.
The legislation in question is about automatic enrolment, whereby, for the first time, UK companies will be compelled to offer employees a pension contribution and each company will have to have a pension in place into which employees will automatically be enrolled.
This could be an existing or new pension scheme (like a Group Personal Pension or Stakeholder pension) as long as it “qualifies”.