Guys I could do with some help.

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If anyone is more clued up than me in HR matters and the government proposal for salary support, please please PM me.

I will give you a snog and waft my morags at you.
 
I may be able to help. For PAYE staff at least. The self employed situation is much less clear.
I am supposed to be getting an advocates update on the employee retention scheme tomorrow morning. Hope so anyway, as I have 1000 staff wanting to know their April pay situation...
 
ACAS have updated their FAQs today and have some good information. The problem is the government haven't yet clarified everything :(
 
Here's the information as far as we know it at the moment:

Subject to the legislation being passed, below is further guidance for the Job Retention Scheme as we understand them. Attached is a template for an agreement which needs to be made with each employee.

HOW TO FURLOUGH AN EMPLOYEE:

1) If you have a clause in your employment contract saying you can lay the employee off if the business cannot retain them, then you can simply furlough the employee

2) If you don’t have this clause, then you need to agree the furlough with the employee; if you are not topping their salary up to the 100% and they don’t want to have 80% of their salary, you can give them the following options for them to choose:

a. You make them redundant but as you cannot pay their redundancy, they would have to try to claim from the government for this

b. Go home and work from home, but employer cannot pay you for this

c. Take furlough where you will get 80% of your salary up to £2,500/month *NB – employer can top this up to 100%

Other rules:

- You cannot furlough someone part-time, they are either working or not working

- You cannot furlough an employee, take them off furlough then re-furlough them

- The employee cannot do any work, they cannot “volunteer” to do some work; if furlough money is claimed and the employee does some work, this is a criminal offence.

- Auto-Enrolment Pensions and NIC: You still have to pay these, this is still salary being paid.

- National Minimum Wage: If you are paying the employee the 80%, and this puts them below the NMW, the employer MUST top up the salary so the employee is paid NMW (don’t forget this increases 1st April 2020)

- Directors can be furloughed if they are on PAYE; however remember they must NOT do ANY work (this includes running payroll, paying suppliers, furloughing the team etc); so it would be quite difficult for an active director to be furloughed.

- We don’t have any guidance on employees who are on zero hours contracts

- The employee does continue to accrue holiday when on furlough
 
JennBags said:
Here's the information as far as we know it at the moment:

Subject to the legislation being passed, below is further guidance for the Job Retention Scheme as we understand them. Attached is a template for an agreement which needs to be made with each employee.

HOW TO FURLOUGH AN EMPLOYEE:

1) If you have a clause in your employment contract saying you can lay the employee off if the business cannot retain them, then you can simply furlough the employee

2) If you don’t have this clause, then you need to agree the furlough with the employee; if you are not topping their salary up to the 100% and they don’t want to have 80% of their salary, you can give them the following options for them to choose:

a. You make them redundant but as you cannot pay their redundancy, they would have to try to claim from the government for this

b. Go home and work from home, but employer cannot pay you for this

c. Take furlough where you will get 80% of your salary up to £2,500/month *NB – employer can top this up to 100%

Other rules:

- You cannot furlough someone part-time, they are either working or not working

- You cannot furlough an employee, take them off furlough then re-furlough them

- The employee cannot do any work, they cannot “volunteer” to do some work; if furlough money is claimed and the employee does some work, this is a criminal offence.

- Auto-Enrolment Pensions and NIC: You still have to pay these, this is still salary being paid.

- National Minimum Wage: If you are paying the employee the 80%, and this puts them below the NMW, the employer MUST top up the salary so the employee is paid NMW (don’t forget this increases 1st April 2020)

- Directors can be furloughed if they are on PAYE; however remember they must NOT do ANY work (this includes running payroll, paying suppliers, furloughing the team etc); so it would be quite difficult for an active director to be furloughed.

- We don’t have any guidance on employees who are on zero hours contracts

- The employee does continue to accrue holiday when on furlough
Click to expand...

This is the advice we’ve been given today too. They only question I have is this point:
. Go home and work from home, but employer cannot pay you for this

People who can work from home who are still actively working surely will still be paid and not furloughed/unpaid as they are still working?
 
sherry90 said:
This is the advice we’ve been given today too. They only question I have is this point:
. Go home and work from home, but employer cannot pay you for this

People who can work from home who are still actively working surely will still be paid and not furloughed/unpaid as they are still working?
Click to expand...
Yes. If they can work from home, then they should still be paid as normal and the employer cannot furlough them and claim the grant from the government. The scheme only applies to employees who would otherwise have been laid off as there wasn't the work for the .
 
JennBags said:
Yes. If they can work from home, then they should still be paid as normal and the employer cannot furlough them and claim the grant from the government. The scheme only applies to employees who would otherwise have been laid off as there wasn't the work for the .
Click to expand...

I think I misinterpreted what you wrote originally then, sorry!
 
Hope today’s announcement has eased the concern a bit. Will take a while to sort the process and there will still be some difficult cases or folks not provided for, but sounds like, for a lot of self employed, it will be good news.
 
JennBags said:
Here's the information as far as we know it at the moment:

Subject to the legislation being passed, below is further guidance for the Job Retention Scheme as we understand them. Attached is a template for an agreement which needs to be made with each employee.

HOW TO FURLOUGH AN EMPLOYEE:

1) If you have a clause in your employment contract saying you can lay the employee off if the business cannot retain them, then you can simply furlough the employee

2) If you don’t have this clause, then you need to agree the furlough with the employee; if you are not topping their salary up to the 100% and they don’t want to have 80% of their salary, you can give them the following options for them to choose:

a. You make them redundant but as you cannot pay their redundancy, they would have to try to claim from the government for this

b. Go home and work from home, but employer cannot pay you for this

c. Take furlough where you will get 80% of your salary up to £2,500/month *NB – employer can top this up to 100%

Other rules:

- You cannot furlough someone part-time, they are either working or not working

- You cannot furlough an employee, take them off furlough then re-furlough them

- The employee cannot do any work, they cannot “volunteer” to do some work; if furlough money is claimed and the employee does some work, this is a criminal offence.

- Auto-Enrolment Pensions and NIC: You still have to pay these, this is still salary being paid.

- National Minimum Wage: If you are paying the employee the 80%, and this puts them below the NMW, the employer MUST top up the salary so the employee is paid NMW (don’t forget this increases 1st April 2020)

- Directors can be furloughed if they are on PAYE; however remember they must NOT do ANY work (this includes running payroll, paying suppliers, furloughing the team etc); so it would be quite difficult for an active director to be furloughed.

- We don’t have any guidance on employees who are on zero hours contracts

- The employee does continue to accrue holiday when on furlough
Click to expand...

Can I ask where you got this from? I’m particularly interested in the furloughed/re-furloughed part, as I think we are planning this, but may have to re-think! I’ve had a look on the Gov site but can’t see anything.
 
DaveW said:
Can I ask where you got this from? I’m particularly interested in the furloughed/re-furloughed part, as I think we are planning this, but may have to re-think! I’ve had a look on the Gov site but can’t see anything.
Click to expand...
It comes from an employment barrister who presented to a network group that I'm a part of.
However the advice and guidance is changing daily. I've just seen, for example, that the grant will now cover employers NIC and pension contributions on top of the 80%/£2,500 whereas yesterday it wasn't going to be paid.
 
DaveW said:
Can I ask where you got this from? I’m particularly interested in the furloughed/re-furloughed part, as I think we are planning this, but may have to re-think! I’ve had a look on the Gov site but can’t see anything.
Click to expand...
However if you have concerns then you need to get paid-for advice from an HR professional, you can't rely on an online forum. I could be making it all up as I go along as far as you know ?
 
JennBags said:
Not in place yet, they are talking about end of April/beginning of May.
Click to expand...
This is disappointing. I need to pay our staff this week so it will be two payrolls before I can claim anything back. I’m not sure we will be able to last until then. Our biggest customer told us today that they probably won’t even be paying February or March’s invoices until all this is over so we won’t have any income for months. They said “We are all in the same boat”, even though they are a large nationwide company and we are a small business with a total of 4 employees ?.
 
JennBags said:
However if you have concerns then you need to get paid-for advice from an HR professional, you can't rely on an online forum. I could be making it all up as I go along as far as you know ?
Click to expand...
Thanks, we have a HR Director providing the advice, I’m just not sure I trust them!!
 
meleeka said:
This is disappointing. I need to pay our staff this week so it will be two payrolls before I can claim anything back. I’m not sure we will be able to last until then. Our biggest customer told us today that they probably won’t even be paying February or March’s invoices until all this is over so we won’t have any income for months. They said “We are all in the same boat”, even though they are a large nationwide company and we are a small business with a total of 4 employees ?.
Click to expand...
You could defer the payments until you get funding, but obviously this would impact your employees. Could you maybe advance them half of what is due?
Have you applied for one of the business interruption loans? If doesn't look like the banks are being desperately cooperative but it does depend on both the individual bank and the manager.
Hope you can get through it x
 
DaveW said:
Thanks, we have a HR Director providing the advice, I’m just not sure I trust them!!
Click to expand...
With regard to the furlough of staff, unless it's written in your contract then you don't have to agree to it, however the alternative is redundancy with no guarantee of getting anything for it, so it's the best option under the circumstances. You cannot furlough someone then take them off furlough, then put them back on it, thus is absolutely not allowed.
 
JennBags said:
You could defer the payments until you get funding, but obviously this would impact your employees. Could you maybe advance them half of what is due?
Have you applied for one of the business interruption loans? If doesn't look like the banks are being desperately cooperative but it does depend on both the individual bank and the manager.
Hope you can get through it x
Click to expand...
When I looked the other day my bank said they’d only give customers a government backed loan if they couldn’t get a loan through the normal banking system. We can so they expect us to pay interest and give a personal guarantee. Clearly banks haven’t got the memo about all being in this together ?
 
meleeka said:
When I looked the other day my bank said they’d only give customers a government backed loan if they couldn’t get a loan through the normal banking system. We can so they expect us to pay interest and give a personal guarantee. Clearly banks haven’t got the memo about all being in this together ?
Click to expand...

An article on the BBC news site was critical of banks requiring personal guarantees. It cited a need for "clearer guidance" from the government on the matter...

If the top level of banking management and the treasury don't speak the same language, then it's no wonder that branch managers and small business owners are unable to implement the financial aid package.

The article did mention one ray of hope: the Royal Bank of Scotland seems to have got a clue, and is offering the loans in the way they were intended to be offered.
 
Sorry to hijack again, but does anyone know if I should pay an employee 80% (today is payroll) and can then claim it all back or do I need to pay 100% to claim 80% back? I’m presuming the grants will go on previous earnings, rather than this payroll?
 
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