UK Payroll News

How important is HR to you? Take a look below, and assess whether you have all of these items in place. If you don’t, are you willing to risk very costly consequences?

Contracts of employment

You must ensure that all your employees have a signed contract of employment – if not, issue one now! A contract is an important document that governs the working relationship between you and your employees, and may prove vital in the event of a dispute!  It is a legal requirement that an employee should be provided with a contract within 8 weeks of starting their employment with you.

Employee handbooks

Employee or Staff Handbooks are an essential tool to assist you in managing your employees. They give employees a codified document explaining all aspects of company policy and procedure in one easy to reach document, (usually a hard copy in reception, or an electronic copy on the company network). This document should be up to date and fully compliant with all aspects of UK Employment Law.  If you do not have one then you could face problems in attempting to deal with difficult or wayward employees.

Absence policy

An effective and clear Absence Management Policy means that you can tackle persistent lateness or absenteeism, and lets both employee and employer know where they stand from the outset.

Appraisals

A great many companies undertake appraisals in January, but they can be done at any time of the year. Just make sure that you set out in detail what is expected of your employees and highlight any areas of improvement but do remember to let them know when they are doing well!

Performance Issues

Do you have an employee who is simply not pulling their weight? You need to deal with it before it becomes a real problem. This is where the Company Handbook and your policy on performance issues becomes a useful tool. It is important if not essential, that you get the best out of your staff, it also sends a message to your other staff that performance issues are dealt with before they become a problem.

Redundancies 

Not an easy decision to make, but may be crucial if the company is to remain profitable. Why not download our Free Redundancy Checklist from our HR Document Shop before you make any decisions? It may well be that existing employees make want to work part-time or perhaps a restructure may help to improve efficiencies and at the same time reduce overheads?

Management training 

You need your Managers to have good people skills if they are to manage your most important asset – your employees. It may be time to invest in their career development. Training & Development skills are considered as important to employees as a salary increase so by investing in your employees you are investing in the future of your business.

Changes to Terms and Conditions 

Are some of your employees working under old and somewhat onerous terms and conditions – do they need to be updated? Do you want to remove or even add in some new ones – this can be done – there is a process to be followed but with our assistance we can guide you through it.

Grievances 

Don’t let them fester. Deal with them head on and avoid costly Tribunal claims of bullying and harassment. Remember you are liable for the actions of your employees and managers, failure to deal with such issues at the outset can cause problems. Listen to your employee’s grievance, investigate it and provide an outcome. Do all you can to avoid conflict in the workplace as you do not want the outcome to be a trip to the Tribunal?

Stress

This is becoming an ever increasing problem facing employers. How you deal with it can come back and bite you if you are not careful! Look out for signs of stress and employees who are not coping. Once you have identified it, deal with it either through managing an employee’s workload or giving them the opportunity of speaking to someone about it. Dealing with it at the first signs can prevent long term sickness and potential claims.

We can help and advise you with any or all of the above, either on our fixed fee retainer or on an ad hoc basis. We are on your side and are here to provide you with the HR support that you need, when you need it. PBS UK Ltd provides an HR Advice and Guidance service either on an ad hoc basis or via our Monthly HR Retainer Service. Our HR advice service is provided by fully qualified CIPD professionals during working hours so that your HR issues can be dealt with speedily and efficiently. Our HR staff understand that  talking through HR issues can often result in an immediate solution.

Please feel free to give us a call on 0115 8853199 to have a chat or for more details of our monthly HR Retainer support package check out our website www.pbs.uk.com

With severe weather forecast for much of the UK in the next week or two, it is possible that some employees may not be able to make it into work during this time. Here we examine the potential legal issue where employees are unable to make it to work.

Employers need to understand their rights and obligation where employees:

• are unable to get into work due to the bad weather
• they may be able to get into work but have to take the day off due to school/nursery closure

The position will very much depend on the circumstances of each case and in particular the terms and conditions of the relevant employee’s contract of employment.

Do I have to pay employees who don’t come in to work?

The general arrangement between any employer and employee is that the employee is obliged to turn up and work and the employer is obliged to provide work and pay the employee for the work they do.

Therefore, if an employee is ready and willing to work, but the employer is not in a position to provide work, for example, because the workplace is closed, then the employer should not be making any deductions from the employee’s pay.

Conversely, where an employee does not fulfil their side of the employment bargain due to an unauthorised absence from work, then the starting position would be that the employer’s obligation to pay them also falls away.

However, this general contractual position needs to be considered alongside the following:

• the statutory right not to suffer unlawful deductions from wages
• discrimination issues
• the statutory right to unpaid time off to deal with family emergencies

An employer will only have the right to withhold pay if an employee’s absence is unauthorised. An employer therefore needs to consider carefully whether the terms of their employment contracts make it clear that absence due to bad weather is not an authorised absence or whether the absence has been authorized in some other way for example, expressly by a manager?

While an obviously unauthorised absence may be grounds for disciplinary action it must be remembered that employees have statutory protection against any unauthorised deduction being made from their wages.

A deduction from wages will be unauthorised unless the employer has a power under the contract to deduct pay in these circumstances (or the employee consents to such a deduction) which is probably unlikely).

What about childcare commitments?

The reason for an employee’s absence when the weather is bad may not be related to their physical inability to attend their place of work, but because schools and nurseries are shut and they cannot make alternative childcare arrangements at short notice.

Employees have the right to take unpaid time off for family emergencies to do with their dependants. However, it should be noted that this time is intended to allow alternative arrangements to be made – it is not a right to allow employees to stay away from work in order to care for their dependants indefinitely themselves.

However, employers also need to be aware that there could be potential sex discrimination issues if employees who are absent due to childcare issues are treated less favourably than those who are absent for other reasons. For example, if an employer decided to discipline all those who stayed at home to look after their children, but not others.

Discretion

Notwithstanding the strict legal position set out above, an employer can always decide to exercise its discretion and pay employees for some or all of the days they cannot make it into work because of adverse weather conditions.

Clearly, there may be good employment relations reasons for doing so. However, it is very important that all employees are treated consistently in these circumstances in order to avoid discrimination claims.

Usage of holidays

In many instances a more practical way around the issue of absence due to adverse weather will be for an employer to consider alternatives to docking pay, such as:

• agreeing with the employee that they will take the time off as paid holiday
• allowing the employee to make up time within a specified time scale
• where the facilities exist, requiring the employee to work from home

It is arguable whether an employer has a right to compel the use of holiday entitlement after the event – again the position will depend on the contractual terms. Therefore, if an employer wishes to deduct days off due to adverse weather from an employee’s annual leave entitlement, this should be communicated to staff at the earliest opportunity.

To avoid conflicts it is important that any such alternatives are communicated clearly and applied consistently to all staff.

Adverse weather policy

Good employment practice would be to make it clear to all employees what policy will be adopted regarding payment to non-attending employees and the use of holiday entitlement in the event of adverse weather.

Employers should consider introducing an adverse weather policy and ensuring that this is adequately communicated to all employees ahead of any further adverse weather conditions. Such a policy should clearly set out the employer’s position and explain how it will handle absence related to bad weather.

Download an adverse weather policy here

Health and safety

Finally, it is absolutely essential that employers have a duty of care concerning the health and safety of their employees, so they should avoid putting undue pressure on employees to attend work if this could result in them taking unnecessary risks to get in.

If the official advice is to stay at home unless the journey is essential, employers should not be asking individuals to get in regardless. There could be a potential liability for the employer if an employee suffered an injury after being pressurised into travelling by car or foot in dangerous conditions.

A balanced approach between encouraging employees to make all reasonable efforts to get to work and not requiring them to take undue risks with their safety is required. Forcing employees into a situation where they feel they have no alternative but to travel to work or risk facing a deduction from pay and/or possible disciplinary action should be avoided.

Working from home

Where possible, it may be beneficial to set up some arrangement where employees are able to work from home if the demands of the business and the type of work allow. With this arrangement, employees will be able to work as normal (albeit remotely from a different location), whilst taking the necessary precautions from a health & safety perspective. Download a remote working policy from our site.

PBS provides full HR guidance services throughout the UK, providing you with all you need to ensure you remain compliant with all aspects of UK employment law. Our e-commerce UK HR service ensures you have all the template documents you need for immediate download. PBS also offers UK & International Payroll Services, Direct Debit collection and BACS Payment Services.

Small firms could find it difficult to implement Real Time Information (RTI) because they lack IT resources, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has warned.

In a report on welfare reform plans the PAC says HMRC needs to consider the impact RTI will have on small businesses. RTI will be mandatory for all companies by October 2013.

“DWP and HMRC are designing a real-time information system for Universal Credit to reduce the risk of overpayments, with benefits being recalculated as soon as circumstances change,” said the Committee.

“Both DWP and HMRC need to understand how the introduction of this system will impact on small businesses and the self-employed who may not have the necessary IT to administer it.”

The report has identified that approximately 94% of employees received earnings electronically, but small businesses without electronic payroll systems and the self-employed do not currently have the capability to submit monthly data to HMRC.

“HMRC told us that it is currently identifying how best to include the last 6% of employees (about 1.5m people) and the self-employed in the RTI system, but the detail of how this is to be achieved remains to be worked through,” the report said.

To avoid the hassle of complying with RTI, outsource your payroll to PBS. For more information on our payroll services, contact us on 0115 9853199, or e-mail info@pbs.uk.com

Few business owners or managers will cite payroll management as one of their favourite tasks. With business trading conditions being tough for most, many companies are asking ‘when does it make sense to outsource payroll operations, and can it reduce overheads?’ John Pindar, the Marketing & International Payroll Manager of Nottingham based PBS (UK) Limited takes a quick look at the top reasons that businesses turn to PBS (UK) Ltd and their Fully Managed Payroll Service to outsource their payroll;

1. Cost; for many small businesses, specialist payroll departments are not worth the extra expense. If you have fewer than 50 employees, there’s a good chance that outsourcing works out cheaper than employing a specialist. Don’t forget to include the associated costs of running an in-house payroll, such as; payslips, software, and training. With prices from as little as £35.00 per month, PBS are usually better value for money than the in-house option. The cost of an in-house payroll may be more than you think!

2. Time; Payroll is a time consuming activity. By outsourcing your payroll, you and your staff have time to focus on more important business activities.

3. Accuracy; Payroll mistakes can be painful, angering employees and — more ominously — the government. Outsourcing to an ISO:9001 payroll services provider reduces the potential for errors when compared with in-house staff. After all, we know about payroll so you don’t have to!

4. Reliability; In-house payroll activities function as reliably as the people doing the work. With the IPP-qualified workforce and vast payroll experience you gain access to by using a payroll bureau, output speed and quality won’t vary in accordance with vacations and illnesses. You also won’t have to spend time helping new hires understand your business’s payroll system

5. Insight; It can be time consuming to research and check the frequent changes to payroll legislation. When you run your payroll in-house, the onus is on you to check that you are legally compliant. When you outsource your payroll, the burden for checking and complying with new legislation rests with the bureau, not you.

6. Confidentiality/Security; Many outsourcers provide a secure and confidential service, only taking payroll instructions from named contacts within your organisation.

7. Worry; There’s a lot to be said for the peace of mind that outsourcing your payroll can bring to a business owner or manager. No headaches, no hassles: You’re left to focus on running a profitable business.

PBS (UK) Limited provides a complete UK Payroll service that is fully compliant with UK Payroll legislation, ensuring your staff get paid accurately and on time, every time. PBS also offers International Payroll Services designed to pay your staff wherever they are in the world. In addition, our outsourced Human Resources Services can ensure that businesses comply with on-going employment law changes and requirements and that staff are managed professionally.

For further information on the Payroll and HR services provided by PBS UK Ltd visit the website at www.pbs.uk.com or call 0115 9853199

With a new year comes plenty of planned changes to UK employment law. Here is the second in a two part preview of what changes are planned and how they will affect you. Part one is available here

http://www.pbs.uk.com/payroll-a-hr-news/?p=27

Working time
The consultation contains proposals to amend the existing legislation in 2012. These include:

· enabling workers unable to take annual leave during one holiday year to carry unused leave forward to the next holiday year

· allowing leave untaken due to absence for maternity, paternity, adoption, and parental leave (and, in due course, leave available under the proposed new flexible parental leave rights) to be carried over into the next leave year

· giving employers more flexibility on annual leave.

Equality Act 2010
The government announced in March 2011 in its Plan for growth, that it considers the current obligation on employers to take reasonable steps to protect their employees from third-party harassment an ‘unworkable requirement’. It intends to consult on the removal of this provision this year. It is unclear what effect this will have on employers and, as European legislation underpins the Equality Act; its removal will not be straightforward.
In May, it was announced that employment tribunals would be given new powers in 2012 to order employers to conduct and publish a pay audit if they are found to have breached the Equality Act. Sanctions will be imposed for failure to undertake and publish a pay audit. Tribunals will have discretion over whether to order an employer to carry out an audit, especially in the case of small employers with limited resources.

Pensions
New laws coming into force in October 2012 will require all employers to enrol eligible jobholders automatically into a pension scheme. The initial wave of employers will be able to voluntarily start auto-enrolment as early as July 2012.

For further guidance on our range of HR Services, please contact our team of fully CIPD-Qualified HR Consultants on 0115 9853199, or e-mail hr@pbs.uk.com

With a new year comes plenty of planned changes to UK employment law. Here is the first in a two part preview of what changes are planned and how they will affect you.

Unfair dismissal
The qualifying period for unfair dismissal will double to two years, with effect from 6 April 2012. There is no mention of any transitional provisions for existing employees. The change is expected to reduce the number of annual unfair dismissal claims by around 2,000. Sceptics anticipate a corresponding increase in discrimination, whistle-blowing and other claims, for which there is no qualifying period.

Tribunal fees
A consultation by the Ministry of Justice is taking place on the introduction of tribunal fees with a report due in 2012. Reports speculate that people on low incomes will not have to pay a fee to lodge an employment tribunal claim and indicate that sliding scale fees will be introduced in December 2013. Suggestions have been made for a range of fees depending on the type of claims including an issue fee and a hearing fee.

Fines
A further proposal is: fining employers up to £5,000 (on top of damages) if they lose a tribunal case. The fine will be payable to the Exchequer and will be 50 per cent of the tribunal award, subject to a lower limit of £100 and an upper limit of £5,000. Interestingly, the proposed fine would not apply to employees, so it may be perceived as a revenue raising exercise. But it could mean that even more cases are settled rather than going to a full hearing.

Conciliation
The original proposal was that all employment disputes would be required to go to ACAS for pre-tribunal conciliation before proceeding to a tribunal. This proposal has now been modified, so claimants will be required to submit details of their claim initially (on a shorter form) to ACAS and will be offered the option of engaging in pre-claim conciliation. There will be no obligation on either party to undertake pre-claim conciliation if they do not wish to.

Protected conversations
A consultation is expected to take place into ‘protected conversations’. These would allow employers to openly raise issues such as poor performance or retirement plans without the fear that their words will be used against them in a tribunal. The intention here is to encourage employers to have sensible conversations that they should already be having but are afraid to. Presently, it is unclear how this would work or if it will happen.

Compensated dismissal
The government is proposing to introduce ‘compensated no-fault dismissals’ for micro-businesses (defined as those with 10 or fewer employees by the European union). This would remove the uncertainty of tribunal decisions in terms of liability and compensation and employers would know how much compensation they would be paying. However, the scheme would have to provide sufficient compensation to avoid employers dismissing employees whenever they felt like it.

For further guidance on our range of HR Services, please contact our team of fully CIPD-Qualified HR Consultants on 0115 9853199, or e-mail hr@pbs.uk.com

Flexible working opportunities can benefit everyone – employers, employees and their families. Most employers now recognise that it makes good business sense to provide flexible working opportunities for their staff. Find out if you have the right to request a flexible working pattern.

What Is Flexible Working?

‘Flexible working’ is a phrase that describes any working pattern adapted to suit your needs. Common types of flexible working are:

· flexi time: choosing when to work (there’s usually a core period during which you have to work)

· annualised hours: your hours are worked out over a year (often set shifts with you deciding when to work the other hours)

· compressed hours: working your agreed hours over fewer days

· staggered hours: different starting, break and finishing times for employees in the same workplace

· job sharing: sharing a job designed for one person with someone else

· homeworking: working from home

· part time: working less than the normal hours, perhaps by working fewer days per week

Remember, this list is not exhaustive and there may be other forms of flexible working that are better suited to you and your employer.

Who Can Ask for It?

Anyone can ask their employer for flexible work arrangements, but the law provides some employees with the statutory right to request a flexible working pattern.

You must:

· be an employee, but not an agency worker or in the armed forces

· have worked for your employer for 26 weeks’ continuously before applying

· not have made another application to work flexibly under the right during the past 12 months

You will then have the statutory right to ask if you:

· have or expect to have parental responsibility of a child aged under 17

· have or expect to have parental responsibility of a disabled child under 18 who receives Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

· are the parent/guardian/special guardian/foster parent/private foster carer or as the holder of a residence order or the spouse, partner or civil partner of one of these and are applying to care for the child

· are a carer who cares, or expects to be caring, for an adult who is a spouse, partner, civil partner or relative; or who although not related to you, lives at the same address as you

Under the law your employer must seriously consider an application you make, and only reject it if there are good business reasons for doing so. You have the right to ask for flexible working – not the right to have it. Employers can reasonably decline your application where there is a legitimate business ground.

Employees who do not have the legal right to request flexible working are, of course, free to ask their employer if they can work flexibly. Many employers are willing to consider such requests.

How To Apply

If you have the statutory right to apply, then there is a process you must follow.

The process of making a request and your employer considering it can take up to 14 weeks. So if you are thinking about changing your work pattern, speak to your employer as early as possible.

You should also be aware that if your employer agrees to your request, then it may result in a permanent change to your contract of employment. If you request a flexible working pattern that will result in you working fewer hours, your pay will reduce too.

If you do not have the right to request flexible working then the statutory process will still be helpful to you and you should consider speaking to your employer as early as possible.

For further guidance on our range of HR Services, please contact our team of fully CIPD-Qualified HR Consultants on 0115 9853199, or e-mail hr@pbs.uk.com

Whilst it is not mandatory under UK law for employers to give references for former employees (except in some industries, such as financial services), it is common practice for most employers to do so. With that in mind, if you are going to give a reference for a former employee, you will need to be careful, as you are legally-bound to ensure that it is factually accurate and not misleading to a future employer.

Here are our tips to ensure you take suitable precautions when providing a reference;

Adopt a practice of providing only factual references that do no more than confirm the dates of employment and type of job.
Where you are including negative information, provide the draft reference to the employee before sending it to the new employer. The employee can then decide whether they would like you to provide the reference or not.
Include a disclaimer.

For more guidance on our HR Services, speak to our team of CIPD-qualified HR professionals on 0115 9853199, or e-mail hr@pbs.uk.com

From the moment and employee unconditionally accepts an offer of employment, a contract of employment could be said to be in effect. The terms of the contract can be oral, written, implied or a mixture of all three. Even if you do not issue a written contract, you are under a legal duty to provide most employees with a written statement of main employment particulars within two months of the start of their employment with you.

For this reason, employment contracts form the basis of every employer / employee relationship.

In many cases employment tribunals claims arise from:

•    an absence of a Contract of Employment
•    a poorly worded Contract
•    the mishandling of changes to contractual terms and conditions of employment
•    failure to apply the proper procedures for terminating a contract

So what should you do to protect yourself and your employees? If there is any doubt, the answer should always be to get a professional HR specialist to draw up a Contract of Employment that is fully compliant with all relevant aspects of UK Employment Law.

As an experienced provider of HR services, we are well placed to provide you with all the information you will need to to ensure your contracts of employment are fully compliant with UK Employment Law. Our fully CIPD-qualified HR professionals prepare all of our template documents with full regard to UK Employment Law.

For more information please contact our HR department on 0115 9853199 or e-mail hr@pbs.uk.com. Alternatively, download a template contract of employment customisable to your own needs from or HR Document Shop, contracts of employment.

The Government’s decision to delay introducing auto-enrolment for small and medium sized businesses is likely to be a mixed blessing for the sector. Pensions experts suggest that while delaying the introduction of auto-enrolment for SMEs with fewer than 50 employees means these employers will avoid compulsory pension contributions for another year, the decision could cause more long-term problems than it solves.

Auto-enrolment is a Government policy designed to ensure that all workers are automatically enrolled in a workplace pension scheme and benefit from a minimum amount of employer contributions, unless they decide to opt out. Auto-enrolment will apply to all employers from October 2012, in stages starting with the largest organisations.

The Government has confirmed that the policy will go ahead as planned for these largest employers, but for those with between 2,999 and 50 employees there will be minor delays in the date on which auto-enrolment applies to them (their “Staging Date”) with new Staging Dates to be specified early in the New Year.

More importantly, the Government has delayed the Staging Dates for businesses with fewer than 50 employees

Pam Pindar, Managing Director of PBS, said:  ‘this delay may obviously be very welcome in the short-term for SMEs who already have enough of their plate dealing with rather challenging trading conditions. However in the medium to long-term it will add further uncertainty to an already uncertain economic climate’. ‘Small businesses need to be able to plan for the future with as much certainty as is reasonably possible The fact that they now do not know when such potentially huge calls on their cash flow will occur makes long-term planning  more difficult’.

In a further move that will affect all employers, the Government has delayed the planned increase in employer contributions from a minimum of 1% of relevant pay to a minimum of 2%.

This was due to take place in October 2016 but the rise has been put on hold until all employers have reached their new Staging Dates, presumably at the end of 2017.

For more information on our suite of Payroll Bureau Services, and how our Human Resources Services can help your organisation, contact us on 0115 9853199 or e-mail info@pbs.uk.com