Of the 600 SME owners and managers asked in the survey, 29 per cent said that this was their biggest concern while ten per cent said they were most worried by their lack of understanding of the new rules.

A further nine per cent said the bigger administrative burden was the biggest problem.

For those ten per cent not in the know, auto-enrolment refers to new rules forcing employers to enrol their employees onto a pension scheme, unless they opt out.

A recent paper by the Centre of Business and Economics research predicted that the cost of auto-enrolment to each business will be up to £28,300 with an additional 101 man hours required to tackle the increased administration.

To find out when your business needs to comply with the rules, check your staging date.

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