National Living Wage Set To Rise on 1st April 2022

Every year, the National Living Wage (NLW) and National Minimum Wage (NMW) are set to rise from the 1st April. The new rates will be:

• NLW £9.50 per hour

• Age 21-22 £9.18 per hour

• Age18-20 £6.83 per hour

• Age16-17 £4.81 per hour

• Apprentice rate £4.81 per hour

If you pay any employees the NLW or NMW, or close to it, it’s a good idea to check their current pay now to see what adjustments you need to make ready for April.

Other Important Rises From 4th April 2022

Other important rises include:

• Statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, parental bereavement, and shared parental payments will rise to £156.66 per week.

• Statutory sick pay, which will rise to £99.35 per week from 6th April;

If this is written into your policies then don’t forget to amend them ready for April.

Are employees entitled to an extra day’s holiday on 3rd June?

To mark The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, the late May bank holiday has been moved to Thursday 2nd June and there is also an additional bank holiday on 3rd June.

Are employees entitled to an extra day’s holiday on 3rd June?

This will depend on what is included in their contract of employment. The contract of employment might state 20 days holiday per annum plus bank holidays. In this instance, employees will be entitled to take paid time off on the additional bank holiday.

If the contract states 28 days holiday per annum and is silent on bank holidays, then there is no increase in the employee's holiday entitlement as a result of the additional bank holiday.

If the contract states 20 days holiday per annum plus 8 bank/public holidays, or lists out the standard 8 bank holidays, employees will only be entitled to receive paid time off on 8 bank holidays.

Even where there is no contractual entitlement to take the additional bank holiday as paid time off, many employers, as a gesture of goodwill, will decide to allow their employees to take the additional bank holiday or to provide time off in lieu.

Celebrating the Step-Up Programme

Harris HR were delighted to attend an afternoon tea event to celebrate the STEP-UP Programme, an internship and training programme for SMEs, hosted by the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex.

The Programme commenced in the autumn of 2020 and ran for a year. During that time Harris HR delivered specialist master classes for participating SME’s covering ‘Internship On-boarding’.

Theresa Pruvost says, "We have loved being involved in this fantastic programme that offered SME’s in the local area fully funded graduate internships."

"Participants said that our master classes provided clear useful advice on all things to cover while on-boarding an intern as well as giving them an opportunity to interact with other likeminded SME Managers.

"At last week’s event we heard about the key successes of the STEP-UP Programme. Students commented on how the Programme had given them valuable insights into what kind of qualities were needed to potentially be hired after university and two interns shared their experience of what the Programme had meant to them and how their internship had led on to permanent employment.