How do I use NEST for auto enrolment?

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a NEST account via our website. If you haven’t done this yet please see our Sign up page.

You’ll need to create your own personal login including a username and password.

Once you have your employer login you’ll be able to start setting up your scheme. For more details on how to do this please see How do I sign up for a NEST account? You can also refer to Information needed to set up Nest (PDF) to gather all the information you need in one place.

When you set up with NEST you’ll need to tell us about your organisation, how you plan to calculate contributions and when you’ll pay them to NEST.

When you reach your staging date or duty start date, you’ll need to assess your workers and tell them about their new pension rights. You may wish to use our templates which are in Word document format. You can find them in our guide Statutory information when setting up your scheme, which also includes the decision trees to help you choose the relevant template. This will help you send out the right information to your workers.

Once you’ve assessed your workers and sent the information to them, you’ll need to enrol all eligible workers into NEST. You’ll need to provide contribution information and enrol any new eligible workers each pay period, also known as an earnings period. Our system lets you tell us if someone doesn’t have a contribution for a particular period or leaves their employment with your company.

You can use a waiting period to delay the date you need to automatically enrol your workers into NEST. If you decide to use a waiting period then you’ll need to let your workers know. For more information please see Can I delay auto enrolment?