Many of the first companies forced to auto enrol their staff into a pension scheme have been left daunted and confused.

The Pensions Act 2008 introduced new legal requirements which mean that all employers in the UK must automatically enrol eligible staff in a pension scheme from different staging dates starting on October 1, 2012.

The reasons for the introduction of this legislation were threefold. People are living longer, there are concerns about the adequacy of UK pension savings, and the Government wanted to increase pension savings among low earners.

So far, approximately 2,300 of the UK’s larger companies have already introduced auto enrolment. Over the next few years, employers of all sizes will need to auto enrol their staff, and more than one million employees will be auto enrolled by 2018.

Sixty per cent of large companies reported problems implementing the new scheme. One in five companies said it took more than 16 months to complete all the necessary preparation, and two-thirds reported finding the scheme more difficult to implement than they had anticipated.

The options are that you navigate the maze of red tape and strict deadlines alone, or that you seek professional help in order to nail the requirements upon you. As an expert in employment law, I would strongly recommend choosing the latter.

Nearly 70 companies have breached the rules of the auto enrolment scheme. There are strict regulations around eligibility, opting out, postponement periods, and re-enrolment, which have led to major complications for employers trying to introduce the scheme.

It is a particularly sobering statistic that one in five employers yet to introduce auto enrolment have approached pension providers and found they were unable to guarantee their acceptance into the scheme - and 7.5 per cent of auto enrolled companies have seen segments of their workforce refused by their current pension provider.

Some smaller firms have even been turned down by independent financial advisers on the grounds that it is not financially viable for them to provide the service, meaning that many companies will end up enrolled in the Government pension scheme.

Given these worrying figures, I would urge employers to seek independent financial and legal advice about auto enrolment duties at the earliest opportunity.

Penalties for failing to comply with the new auto enrolment rules are wide-ranging; in the first instance, a formal compliance notice is issued. If the breach is not then remedied, the employer can be charged penalties of £400 or more. In cases of serious or persistent breaches, the regulator can impose penalties of £50 to £10,000 a day depending on the size of the workforce.

The employer has an obligation to provide certain information to scheme members – rights to opt out, details about tax relief and so on. They must also provide scheme administrators with personal information about jobholders, such as their contact details and their earnings.

It would be prudent for employers to review existing employment contracts to ensure no data protection issues arise regarding providing these details to the scheme administrator. If contracts are silent on data protection, it would be sensible to add words to the contract confirming the employee’s express consent.

It is really crucial that all the groundwork is done to put auto enrolment procedures in place well in advance of your staging date; you should start planning your auto enrolment at least nine months prior to this deadline. If you leave everything until your set staging date, then it will already be too late, and you will never manage to discharge your obligations correctly.

• Fflur Jones is employment partner at Darwin Gray LLP, which has an office at Langstone, near Newport, and Cardiff.