Preserve and Enforce The National Minimum Wage For Your Workforce

What do you want your business to be remembered for in 2021?

Probably not being named and shamed by the Government for flouting minimum wage rules. 

National Living and Minimum Wage (NLMW) rates are changing once again.

Are you absolutely sure everyone in your organisation is being paid at the correct level?

The repercussions of uncertainty can come in the form of a £20,000 penalty. A high price to pay as evidenced by the £6.7m of total penalties reported by HM Revenue & Customs.

If you have Harri’s Auto scheduling enhancement tool, part of Harri’s payroll package, you can rest easy knowing that even Matthew’s salary was updated at midnight on his birthday to reflect any change in his National Minimum Wage category. That means Matthew’s happy, the taxman’s happy and you’re happy focusing on important things like the amazing opportunities facing our industry over the coming years. This unique tool, exclusive to Harri, will automate your National Minimum Wage compliance requirements significantly reducing your payroll headaches.

View Harri’s Auto scheduling enhancement tool in action

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So why is this important?

  • First and foremost, we should all be committed to paying our staff at least the minimum to which they are entitled;
  • Second, failure to pay workers the NMW leads to greater costs including all arrears at current NMW rates plus additional financial penalties of up to 200% of those arrears capped at £20,000 per person; and
  • Third, do you want HMRC to publish your name alongside those like Tesco’s and nearly 140 other companies, many in the hospitality industry, for failure to pay every employee at least NMW? In total, HMRC identified workers in these firms had been underpaid £6.7million. 

Business Minister Paul Scully is clear, ‘Paying the minimum wage is not optional. It is the law… Make no mistake, those who fail to follow minimum wage rules will be caught out and made to pay up.’

It’s not easy though, is it? Manually updating everyone’s salary information from the 1 April every year with any government increase to NMW is pretty challenging. It is even more of a slog keeping up to date with every member of staff’s birthdate and updating them to the next NMW band from then to ensure that you maintain compliance. This is especially hard this year as the upper NLMW band has been changed from 25 years and over down to 23 years old over. This is likely to capture many more of your staff than perhaps you realise. 

This is absolutely not what you want to be thinking about right now with reopening just around the corner. So, let Harri do it for you. From 1 April 2021, we will be offering this unique Auto scheduling enhancement to all our existing Teamlive clients for free as part of their existing packages. They can stop worrying about this soon and you could too. It even provides a Reporting function with real-time data on employee wages and more.

Real Living Wage

Alternatively, if you want to be known for something really positive, you could make sure that you pay your workers either the Real UK or London Living Wage rather than the National Living/Minimum Wage. For 2021 the Real Living Wage has been calculated as £9.50 and £10.85 for London whereas the National Living/Minimum Wage from April 2021 will be £8.91 for those aged 23 and over. 

One thing that really shone through the gloom of the last year was the resilience and support of our employees. We all peeked behind the curtain and got to know each other as real people. Don’t you think those real people deserve to be paid the Real Living Wage? There could be a strong business incentive behind this decision too. Whilst we have all been managing our way through the day to day of the COVID crisis, the silent assassin, Brexit has been patiently waiting to cause chaos to our staffing and recruitment plans. 

A company paying the Real Living Wage will stand out from the pack when the best candidates are looking for their next career move. And of course, not only would you avoid those HMRC non-compliant penalties but, by signing up for Harri’s Auto scheduling enhancement tool, it will adjust your Real or London Living Wage rates automatically too making Matthew even happier.

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