From 1 July, the Chancellor’s new changes to the Job Retention Scheme came into effect, allowing employers to bring back employees on part-time hours, known as the ‘Flexible Furlough Scheme’. This new scheme helps businesses get back on to their feet after the Coronavirus pandemic which shook the economy, helps ease employees back into work who still may be unsure about returning to the work place full-time and starts the process of rebuilding the country.
The Job Retention scheme has proved to be very effective during the last 5 months and has helped protect more than 9.3 million jobs.
Here is a summary of some of the key points that employers need to know about the new ‘Flexible Furlough Scheme’:
1. The new changes apply to any employee who has already been furloughed for at least three consecutive weeks at any time during the period between 1 March and 30 June 2020.
2. Employers can bring back furloughed employees to work for any amount of time and on any work pattern and will be able to claim the furlough grant for hours not work by those individuals. You must make sure to work out the employees usual working hours and furloughed hours before you can calculate the amount of furlough grant to claim. You are liable to pay the employees for the hours they work in full. If you do not intend to bring back employees any time soon, your pay calculations will not change however the amount you contribute will have increased from the 1 August.
3. Working out how much to pay your employee might be a little tricky but the government have issued examples of how to work out pay for different work patterns and hours, which include:
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Example for someone working a fixed hours
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Example for someone without fixed hours
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Example for someone working fixed hours who is off sick or on family related leave on/before 19 March 2020
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Example for someone without fixed hours based on average in 2019-20 tax year
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Example for calculating the number of furloughed hours
It’s Time to Adapt To a New Way of Working
We are now adapting to the ‘new normal’ and having to adjust our way of working. By having the right technology in place, businesses can ensure that they are compliant with government guidelines and are able to receive the maximum amount of financial support.
The coronavirus pandemic has seen many businesses forced to adopt flexible working patterns. Whether this is, managing flexible hours, creating new shift patterns or attempting to keep track of unplanned absences, many businesses using traditional recording methods have found this challenging.
Time and Attendance systems can help your business over these challenges. Our systems will ensure accurate and useful information to track your workforce.
What Our Time and Attendance Systems Can Do For You
Automated Hours Calculation – Using our expertise, we configure the software to your bespoke calculation methods. This means that each employee’s working pattern can be calculated with their own rules.
Absence and Holiday Management – Recording absences, whether planned or not, is easy with a Time and Attendance System. For example, if you know that an employee is shielding for the foreseeable future you can mark this in the system, helping keep track of where your employees are.
Reporting – Having the information you require available when you need it is a big advantage. Whether that be simple clock card type report, departmental summaries, lateness and absence reporting or Holiday Entitlement reporting. This makes the system the perfect tool for the government’s new job retention scheme.
Payroll link – effortlessly send your calculated time and attendance data to your payroll system and remove the need to manually key in data. Perfect for keeping track of what days you are liable to pay your staff and when the government will contribute to hours on furlough.
Ensure clean auditing of hours – By using a Time and Attendance System for monitoring hours worked and by using the built-in reporting tool, you can ensure that the hours reported to HMRC comply with government guidelines and are accurate.
Take a look at our FlexiTime software and see if it fit’s in with your new way of working!
Our Time and Attendance Systems can be fully tailored to accommodate your businesses wants and needs.
It is not too late to switch to a modern way of recording employee working hours to help your business adapt to a ‘new normal’! Contact Permatek today and we could have a fully working time and attendance system implemented in your business in just under two weeks!
