Potential National Living Wage Increase

At the Conservative party conference, the chancellor pledged to increase the National Living Wage to £10.50 per hour by 2024. He also said that the age at which one qualifies for this wage will drop from its current age of 25 to 21.

The current National Living Wage for over-25s is £8.21.

The current minimum wage for people aged between 21 and 25 is £7.70.

The Living Wage Foundation, a campaigning organisation which has independently calculated what it believes the living wage should be, says that it should already be £9 outside of London and £10.55 inside London.

This announcement comes after the government increased the National Living Wage in April from £7.83 to £8.21, and after Labour announced its intention to raise the NWL to £10 by 2020 for all workers, including those under 18 who currently earn £4.35.

Since both the major parties have expressed support for the idea, it is likely that businesses can expect a rise in the NWL in the next few years.

It is surprisingly easy for businesses to accidentally end up underpaying their staff as they struggle to stay up to date with these kinds of developments.

Common reasons for violating these national minimums include deducting uniform costs from wages (including making employees provide their own clothes), not paying for travel time, not increasing apprentice pay when necessary, or using the wrong time period to calculate the amount required.

In a statement to HR media website People Management, the head of reward and policy at CIPD, Charles Cotton, said,

“It would be helpful to receive more feedback from HMRC alongside these lists, giving not only the top reasons for undercutting wages but outlining the common mistakes made by companies that have been fined, whether it’s not gathering enough data or failing to update their payrolls regularly,” he said. 

Our Workplace Management System Helps You Pay Staff Correctly

Our system can help you to fix both of the problems named by Charles Cotton: gathering data and regularly updating payroll.

Whether staff use a contactless smartcard, their fingerprints, or the web browser and mobile app Self Service Module to clock in, the data is sent straight to the central database.

Once the data is in the system, you can use our report wizard and advanced report customising settings to create detailed reports on employee working hours, or simply export the clocking data in formats compatible with all leading payroll systems.

The software calculates the National Living and Minimum wages based on time worked, and will send you alerts if a violation would occur on a planned shift. It can separate ‘worked time’ into different overtime rates, can calculate flexitime balance, and can even insert breaks if employees forget to clock out for them.

If you are interested in keeping track of your attendance data, then please contact us for more information.