Month: March 2018

The Share The Joy campaign has been launched to promote awareness of the workplace right to shared parental leave.  Eligible parents can share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay after having a baby. Time can be taken individually or parents can be at home together for up to 6 months.

According to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) around 285,000 couples are eligible for shared parental leave each year, but most people are unaware of this and they estimate that the take up could be as low as 2%.

To find out more about Shared Parental Leave visit the government’s new website https://sharedparentalleave.campaign.gov.uk/. This website contains information for employers as well as parents.  The campaign is part of the government’s commitment to not only protecting employment rights but to build on workers’ rights.

For help and advice on all aspects of payroll and HR, including shared parental leave, contact one of our experienced team at All Payrolls.

The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) order 2018 has been put before parliament and if approved will come into force on 6^th April 2018.  This order effectively sees 8 statutory provisions increase.  These include the minimum amount of basic award of compensation on various aspects of unfair dismissal with the award limit in one section increasing by over £3,000 to £83,682, also the maximum amount of “a week’s pay” for the purpose of calculating a redundancy payment or unfair dismissal is increased.

For full details follow this link https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/194/pdfs/uksi_20180194_en.pdf

At All Payrolls we manage every aspect of payroll and pension administration and work in partnership with trusted HR service provider partners who can help and advise employers on the complex area of HR Management including unfair dismissal claims.

Scheduled for around the end of March there are going to be changes to how you will provide Declarations of Compliance to The Pensions Regulator. Previously you will have used the government gateway for the authentication process.  From the end of March you will use The Pensions Regulators own system.

The most important changes to the ‘AE Login’ are:

• Employers will need a passcode, which is obtained by creating an account from the main landing page
• You can create a ‘guest account’ for employers to get started without setting up a passcode
• Red warning/reminder messages will appear if an employer is close to their duties start date
• For people completing Declarations of Compliance for multiple employers (people like us here at All Payrolls) there will be a ‘multi-employer dashboard’ which can be sorted by employer and declaration deadline – very handy!

Also, if you have partially completed a Declaration of Compliance through the government gateway this will have automatically been saved, and once a new account/passcode is created you will be able to carry on from where you left off.

The image shown was supplied to us by The Pensions Regular showing the employer dashboard.

At All Payrolls we provide a full Pension Administration Service  taking away the burden of dealing with this for our clients. Contact us  for more information.

There are new rates of pay for national minimum wage coming into force on 1^st April.  These new rates are applicable from 1 April 2018 to 31^st March 2019.  In any given pay period a worker’s pay must not fall below the National Minimum Wage rate.

So if you employ people:

Aged 25+ the new rate will be £7.83

21 – 24 year olds the new rate will be £7.38

18 – 20 year olds the new rate will be £5.90

16 and 17 year olds the new rate will be £4.20

Apprentices – the new rate will be £3.70

At All Payrolls we are experts and used to dealing with payroll all the time.  In our experience there are some common payroll related errors that can be avoided, which we are pleased to share here, such as:

• Failing to apply the correct rate of pay for apprentices in their second year
• Unpaid working time – so not paying people for all the hours worked and not including time spent travelling between work assignments or during training
• Including tips and cover charges, you cannot count these as part of minimum wage calculations
• Including premium rates of pay as part of minimum wage. This is when employees are paid a higher rate for some of the work they do – this cannot be included in minimum wage calculations.

You can read the National Minimum Wage Guide for Employers from the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, or use HMRC’s online course on paying workers the national minimum wage.

Or you could ask us!  At All Payrolls we can answer your national minimum wage questions or we can take all the hassle away from you and manage your payroll completely.  Why not give us a call or visit our Payroll web page for more information.