What do the different statuses for an inactive worker mean?

A worker is classed as an Inactive worker when we don’t expect to receive any more contributions for them. Their ‘status’ will indicate the reason why we’re not expecting contributions.

An inactive worker will have one of the following statuses:

• ‘Opted out’ – a worker will appear under this status once they’ve opted out through our automated telephone service, website or by a form that you process using a contribution schedule.
• ‘Meeting duties elsewhere’ – a worker will appear under this status if you’ve told us they’re contributing to another qualifying pension scheme and don’t want to contribute into NEST anymore.
• ‘Deceased’ – a worker will show under this status if they’ve passed away during their membership with NEST.
• ‘No further contributions payable’ – a worker will show under this status when they’ve left your employment. You can mark a worker under this status using a contribution schedule. They won’t appear on any schedules following the one you used to tell us they’d left your employment. Please see How do I let you know a member has left employment using my online account? If a leaver starts working for you again, you may need to re-enrol them. You can find more information in How do I re-enrol a worker who has left employment?
• ‘Ceased’ or ‘Left pensionable service’ – a worker will show as ‘Ceased’ or ‘Left pensionable service’ when they choose to stop making contributions to NEST. A worker can cease contributions by phone, online or by asking you to process the request through a contribution schedule. When a worker chooses to cease contributions, their own NEST account will remain open but they’ll be removed from your active workers list so that they no longer appear in your contribution schedules. If a worker submits their request through us we’ll let you know. You should stop deducting contributions from them at the beginning of the next earnings period after their request is submitted. If you’re processing their request through a contribution schedule, you can stop deducting contributions from them at that point. Please see How do I let NEST know if a worker wants to stop making contributions? A worker will need to be re-enrolled into NEST if they’d like to start making contributions again from their wages. You’d need to re-assess your worker at this point to re-enrol them with the correct enrolment type.