A recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found that while the majority (75%) of employers are fully aware of imminent changes to workplace pension schemes, not as many are prepared for auto-enrolment - less than one third (32%) of employers know the date on which the new rules will apply to them.

Around 47% per cent of respondents said their organisation had either not identified their staging date (28%) or were unsure (19%). Just over 30% of respondents working for large organisations, whose staging dates are actually the most imminent, were unsure if their date had been identified or not. Similarly, 38% of respondents working for large organisations were unable to say whether or not the organisation had already modelled the financial consequence of auto-enrolment, or was planning to do so within the next 24 months.

Despite these concerns, there is room for optimism that employers will meet the 2012 challenges. Nearly a quarter of large employers surveyed (24%) and a sixth of small and medium sized employers (14%) have already examined the cost implications of auto-enrolment, and another 34% of large employers and 37% of SMEs are planning to do so within the next twelve months.

Among those who have already costed the impact of auto-enrolment, 42% say that it will have no impact on the value of their current pension offering, while 22% report that it will increase. Just 22% anticipate making their scheme less generous as a result of auto-enrolment. An additional 13% say that they currently do not know what the outcome will be.