New pension legislation known as the Workplace Pension Reform, or Auto Enrolment, was introduced in 2012. It stated that by 2017 every business in the UK should be operating a pension scheme with all relevant staff enrolled into it. This law has been introduced because people are living longer, and the current state pension arrangements are falling short of being able to cope with the needs of an ageing population.
To alleviate this burden on the state pension scheme, every employer has a responsibility to help their workers in the UK save for retirement. They must automatically enroll certain workers into a qualifying workplace pension scheme and then make contributions towards it.