Managing Annual Leave During COVID-19: 3 Tips Every HR Manager Needs To Know

COVID-19 has thrown many curveballs for businesses of every size and industry across the United Kingdom. Employers are finding themselves in situations that they could never have expected and faced with challenges that nobody saw coming. However, life must go on and business owners are forced to find creative solutions to overcome these challenges and ensure the continued growth of their businesses.

One of the most common challenges facing employers right now is related to annual leave. Of course, many employees across the country have been placed on furlough for some time in 2020 and many are still on furlough today. However, this doesn’t mean that they are not entitled to annual leave, or that their employee rights no longer apply.

So, employers who have had to place employees on furlough are now trying to figure out how to manage annual leave for those employees in a way which is fair to their staff without being detrimental to their business. Thankfully, help is at hand. In this blog post, we share top tips for employers who find themselves navigating these murky waters and help you to take a strategic approach that’s in everyone’s interest.

3 Tips For Managing Annual Leave During COVID-19

Thankfully, help is at hand. These top tips for employers who find themselves navigating these murky waters will help you to take a strategic approach that’s in everyone’s interest.

Review Existing Policy

The first thing you need to do when figuring out how you’re going to manage your employee annual leave is to review your existing annual leave policy. Most businesses will have standard annual leave policies that don’t vary all that much from business to business. However, there are some things in your policy that you may want to change temporarily.

For example, many businesses state in that policy that annual leave cannot be carried from one year to another. However, the rules in relation to the carry over of annual leave have been temporarily relaxed to deal with the coronavirus disruption. Many employees have not been able to take their annual leave and will likely not be able to do so in the months to come and so you should review and update this element of your policy in light of these relaxed rules.

Internal Communication

The second step in this process is to ensure that you communicate any and all changes to your existing annual leave policy with all employees. If you are making changes to the policy, it is essential that you share these changes with staff.

Simply sending a company-wide email may not be sufficient in this case, as it’s very likely that the email could get lost amongst many other emails in the employee’s inbox. A better option would be to distribute the updated policy via an online employee portal such as BrightPay Connect. With Connect’s self-service portal and app, employees can access important documents anywhere, anytime, and receive instant notifications on their smartphone or tablet when a new document has been made available to them.

If you think that employees will have a lot of questions regarding the changes to the existing policy, it would be in your best interest to hold a meeting either online or in person, where employees have the opportunity to ask questions and you can give detailed explanations so that everyone is on the same page.

Be As Flexible As Possible

Finally, human resources managers or line managers who are dealing with incoming annual leave requests should at all times strive to be as flexible and facilitating as possible. These are very unusual and utterly unprecedented circumstances that we find ourselves in. You may have employees with underlying conditions, with children but no access to childcare etc. whose ability to take holiday time is compromised through no fault of their own.

Therefore, it is in the best interest of your employees and your business to try where possible to accommodate the needs of your employees when it comes to annual leave until the public health status has improved.

Manage Annual Leave During COVID-19 With BrightPay Connect

BrightPay Connect is an optional cloud portal add-on to our multi-award winning payroll software. With Connect, employers can take advantage of the latest in cloud automation technologies and employee self-service. Connect boasts industry-leading features in both payroll and human resources to create a holistic cloud portal that actually works for your business.

With BrightPay Connect, managing annual leave is simple, and it’s even more beneficial during COVID-19 as employees are working from home more than ever before. Connect allows employees to request annual leave straight from an employee app on their smartphone or tablet. The request instantly appears in the Connect dashboard of the relevant manager.

The manager can then check if other employees are on leave during the requested dates via a company calendar, which is also accessible on their online dashboard. Then, they can approve or reject the request and the employee is instantly notified on their app. Furthermore, a time-stamped log of all requests, approvals and rejections is kept in the cloud for future reference. This is ideal when multiple users are managing annual leave remotely.

Book Your BrightPay Connect Demo Today

If your business is struggling with annual leave management because of COVID-19, then why not get in touch with us today? Book your free BrightPay Connect demo where a member of our BrightPay Connect team of experts will be happy to assist you. We will walk you through the various features of BrightPay Connect and explain in detail how these features can make annual leave management easier than ever before.

Posted bySarah TyrrellinAnnual LeaveBrightPay ConnectCoronavirus

Kickstart Scheme

The Kickstart Scheme allows an employer or group of employers to create new placements for young people and can apply for funding from the scheme. The people who are currently receiving Universal Credit and are in danger of long-term unemployment can be placed in these 6-month job placements. The jobs placements will allow the participants to gain experience and skills that will assist them in finding employment when they have completed the scheme.

Under the Kickstart Scheme funding for 25 hours per week for 100% of the relevant National Minimum Wage category in addition to Employer National Insurance contributions and Employer automatic enrolment pension minimum contributions is available per participant. Funding of £1,500 for setup, support and training costs per placement is available too. This scheme is available to employers in England, Scotland and Wales.

In order to apply for funding under this scheme an employer must have a minimum of 30 job placements. If an employer cannot offer the 30 job placements, they can become partners with other employers in order to reach the minimum number of placements required. Other organisations could include similar employers, registered charities, local authorities and trade bodies. Information about applying for a grant as a group of employers can be found here.

A company, regardless of their size, can apply for funding under the Kickstart Scheme. The job placements created by employers under this scheme have to be for new jobs and cannot be to replace existing or planned jobs or result in any existing employee or contractor to lose or reduce their employment.

The job placements must be:

• A minimum of 25 hours per week for a 6-month duration 
• Paid at least the National Minimum Wage for the person’s age category 
• Not need the participant to undergo lengthy training in order to undertake the job placement 

Every application ought to include how the employer will aid the participants grow their skills and experience. Development options to be supplied by the organisations include providing support to the participants to seek long-term work and support with CV and interview preparation and assisting participants with basic functions such as timekeeping, attendance and teamwork.

Posted byDebbie ClarkeinPayroll

Today marks 45 days before the end of the Furlough Scheme

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will officially come to an end on 31st October 2020 and employers will need to decide to either:

• Bring their employees back to work on their normal hours 
• Reduce their employees’ hours 
• Terminate their employment 

The government has introduced a new Job Retention Bonus Scheme, which seeks to incentivise employers to hold off on redundancies. This is a one-off payment to employers who have availed of the CJRS for each furloughed employee who remains continuously employed until 31‌‌‌ ‌January 2021.

However, the unfortunate truth is if you cannot afford to pay your employees, you will need to terminate their employment. If a worker loses their job and is entitled to redundancy pay, this should be calculated based on their pre-furlough wages, and firms can't use the money from furlough to subsidise redundancy packages.

If you are making 20 or more employees redundant within any 90-day period at a single establishment, you must consult employees. This involves speaking to them about why there are redundancies being made and if there are any alternatives to redundancy.

The period of time that this consultation takes depends on how many jobs are being made redundant.

• 100 or more redundancies - the consultation must start at least 45 days before any dismissals take effect 
• 20 to 99 redundancies - the consultation must start at least 30 days before any dismissals take effect 
• When there are fewer than 20 redundancies, there is no set time period. 

If you do not consult employees in a redundancy situation, any redundancies you make will almost certainly be unfair and you could be taken to an employment tribunal.

Today marks 45 days before the end of the furlough scheme – the deadline for large employers to commence the consultation process where 100 or more redundancies are being made. A recent study estimated that the UK was likely to see around 450,000 redundancies this autumn alone. It warned this figure could exceed 735,000 if redundancy notifications continued to rise.

Fresh calls have been made for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to be extended over fears the UK could be hit with an onslaught of redundancy notices, as employers seek to comply with the 45-day notice period.

Register for our upcoming webinar to find out more about the end of the CJRS, the Job Retention Bonus Scheme and Redundancies. Places are limited – click here to book your place now.

Posted byRachel HynesinCoronavirus

The Results of our Customer Survey are in, and we want to say Thank You!

At BrightPay, we are always trying to improve our software so that it does more for you. As part of this effort, we conduct regular customer surveys through which we collect data on your experience with BrightPay. The results of our most recent survey are in, and we are so pleased with the feedback that we received.

We pride ourselves on not just being a payroll software provider, but being an industry leader, constantly adapting our software to keep up with the ever-evolving world of payroll. Our developers are always working in the background to add new features and improved functionality to both the payroll software and BrightPay Connect. Surveys like this one are absolutely essential to this as they keep us informed of what our customers want and need, and what we need to work on moving forward.

We’ve compiled the results of our latest survey and we wanted to share them with you.

The Results

As the survey was very comprehensive, we’re not going to share the results of each and every question. But, we did want to share the main areas of focus and what you, our customers, said.

• We asked: How satisfied are you with BrightPay Payroll Software? 
  You said: 47% of our customers said they were extremely satisfied, 43% said they were very satisfied and 9% said they were satisfied with BrightPay. This comes together to a total of 99.6% customer satisfaction rate, which is fantastic news for everyone on the BrightPay team. 

• We asked: How satisfied are you with BrightPay Connect?
  You said: An incredible 97.9% of our respondents said they were satisfied with BrightPay Connect, our add-on to the payroll software. The most highly rated BrightPay Connect features included automatic cloud backup (99.6%), online employer dashboard (99.5%) and employee self-service portal & app (99.4%).

• We asked: How satisfied are you with BrightPay's Customer Support?
  You said: The majority of customers rated BrightPay's telephone support (97.35%), email support (98.2%), online help documentation (98.1%) and online video tutorials (99.2%) as excellent, very good or good, giving our customer support team an overall satisfaction rate of 98.2%.

• We asked: How would you rate BrightPay’s handling of COVID-19?
  You said: 98.6% of customers answered that they found our handling of COVID-19 overall to be either excellent, very good or good - in particular, our free online COVID-19 webinars (99.4%), payroll upgrades (98.8%), online help and support (98.3%) and phone and email support (97.4%).

BrightPay Functionality

We also asked you to rate BrightPay's functionality. Overall, 99.6% of customers rated BrightPay's functionality as excellent, very good or good. When asked about specific features, our new payroll journal / accounting software integration was rated 88.9%, our integration with pension providers was rated 93.1% and 97.7% bureau customers rated our batch payroll processing functionality as either excellent, very good or good. 

Get In Touch

If you feel that you’re not using the full suite of features to its fullest potential, you can book a free demo with a member of the BrightPay team where we can talk you through any concerns you have and show you how you and your business can get the most from BrightPay and BrightPay Connect.

Remote Working Is Becoming The New Normal - What Does This Means For Payroll?

2020 has been a transformative year for most businesses. Many employers have had to take a long hard look at how they manage their employees and make significant changes in the wake of COVID-19 in order to adapt to what is quickly becoming the new normal. For a large proportion of these businesses, allowing employees to work remotely is playing a central role in that change. And this throws up some challenges.

Remote working isn’t a new phenomenon. Cloud innovations have made it possible for people to work from home for many years. However, most businesses have been reluctant to embrace this practice up until now. This is because, when employees are spread out, even the most basic tasks such as distributing payslips, applying for annual leave and internal communication can be more difficult.

Today, however, employers are finding themselves in a position where they must allow employees to work remotely and find clever solutions to these challenges. And BrightPay Connect is one such solution that makes remote working easier for everyone.

How Does Remote Working Affect Payroll and HR?

You might not think that remote working has any impact on processing payroll, especially if you’re a small business with just one payroll administrator. But there are a number of ways that remote working can indirectly impact payroll. It also has numerous knock-on effects on human resources management which need to be addressed in order for a business to thrive.

Here are some examples of the payroll and HR challenges presented by remote working:

• Distributing payslips manually can be more time-consuming, costly and less secure when employees are not located in the workplace, and instead payslips must be posted to their home addresses. 

• Making sure that the payroll and any employee leave during that particular pay period are aligned can be tricky, especially if a number of different line managers and/or HR staff are operating from different locations. 

• Checking that the information for the current pay period is accurate can be challenging with employers and managers working from home with often unreliable internet connections. 

BrightPay Connect Makes Remote Working Easier

BrightPay Connect is a cloud portal add-on to our payroll software. While the payroll software gives you everything you need to process your payroll, BrightPay Connect offers a range of additional features that streamline your human resource management.

The features of BrightPay Connect include:

• An employee self-service app that’s compatible with both iOS and Android. On the app employees can apply for leave, view and edit their personal data, access a secure payslip library and view HR documents, all from their smartphone or tablet. 

• An online employer dashboard. Because payroll information is stored online with BrightPay Connect, employers can access their dashboard from their laptops at home. On this dashboard, employers can view a company calendar which displays all past and upcoming employee leave, upload and share documents with employees, and view any outstanding payments due to HMRC. The employer dashboard also shows notifications for any employee leave requests, or requests from the payroll processor. 

• Automatic cloud backups. With BrightPay Connect, you don’t need to worry about safely storing your data. BrightPay Connect automatically backs up the payroll data to the cloud and keeps a chronological history of all backups so that you can restore previous versions if needed. This is a great step towards GDPR compliance for businesses who are trying to modernise their data protection practices. The cloud backup is also extremely useful for remote working because everything is stored and accessible via the cloud from any location.

• Clever employee leave management. Employees can request leave directly from their smartphone app. This is beneficial to remote employees because it eliminates the need for employees to visit their line manager or human resources manager in order to fill out leave request paperwork. The request instantly appears as a notification on their manager’s online dashboard. From here, the manager can use the company calendar to see who else is on leave for the dates requested, and either approve or deny the leave request. A time-stamped log of all leave requests is maintained which is particularly useful when a number of different people are managing employee leave as all of the relevant parties can easily see who approved or denied a request, and when. 

• Requests for payroll data. Whether you are a payroll bureau processing payroll for a number of clients, or an in-house payroll administrator looking for payroll information from various departmental managers, BrightPay Connect’s payroll entry requests feature can be extremely beneficial when working remotely. You can send a request to your clients or to in-house managers requesting information regarding the employee’s hours and payment information for that particular pay period. Once the payroll information has been entered or uploaded, you will receive a notification on your employer dashboard and can synchronise the information directly to the payroll software. As well as eliminating the need for double entry of payroll information, it also frees up time spent chasing the various managers for the employee timesheets, especially if they are working remotely. 

Book Your Free BrightPay Connect Demo Now

If your business is embracing remote working and trying to find ways to facilitate this new practice, then book your free BrightPay Connect demo today and let our team of experts show you just how much easier remote working can be.

Posted bySarah TyrrellinBrightPay ConnectPayroll Software

During National Payroll Week, BrightPay Applauds UK’s Payroll Professionals for their Remarkable Efforts in 2020

As we head towards the latter part of 2020, many of us are already looking forward to 2021. It has been a most unusual year. It has been a time of hope, of struggle, of confusion, but above all, it’s been a year of unprecedented change. We are all now intimately acquainted with the words lockdown, furlough, working from home and the interiors of our colleague’s homes. As with all momentous times, there are those among us who have risen to the challenge, and we have shown our gratitude and appreciation to them in a variety of ways. Today, we honour a group, that although often overlooked, plays a critical role in ensuring that we can depend on them to keep us in the black.

National Payroll Week

September 7th to 11th is National Payroll Week. First run in 1998, National Payroll Week was the brainchild of the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP). The aim was to shine a spotlight on the profession and increase awareness around what incredible work goes into making sure people are paid on time and correctly.

This year’s theme of 'Keeping the UK Paid' is timely and resonates in a way that previous years may not have. Throughout these past months, it is our payroll professionals who stayed the course, and, despite the seismic shifts in their workday and operations processes, continued to serve and ensure each of us received what was our due. This year, BrightPay wants to acknowledge and recognise that payroll professionals – regardless of where they now sit – are the stalwarts of normalcy in abnormal times. We salute their dedication and consistency.

It is also worth noting that thanks to the hard work and effort of payroll professionals and their collection of income tax and National Insurance they are expected to contribute approximately £325.7bn to the UK economy in 2020/21.

It is a fact not lost on the government which is why Rt Hon Jesse Norman MP has this to say:

"This year the theme for National Payroll Week is 'Keeping the UK paid', and with over 8 million employees having been furloughed at some stage since March, this could not be more apt. I am grateful for the dedication of payroll professionals in rising to the challenges COVID-19 has brought. I am delighted to support the week and encourage as many employers as possible to take part."

What is the CIPP doing to mark National Payroll Week?

Here is a quick overview of events organised by the CIPP: 

Monday 7th September 

• The CIPP in conjunction with The Payroll Centre and Reward Strategy is hosting a virtual Future of Payroll roundtable.
• The CIPP is also running virtual wine tasting that is available to invited attendees. 

Thursday 10th September

• The CIPP is conducting a National Payroll Week virtual conference that is available to all payroll professionals.

If you are planning to join in on the celebrations and mark the occasion, CIPP offers a wealth of marketing tools that are ready for you to use. Simply download this digital pack packed with posters, stickers, desktop and mobile wallpapers, and more. 

BrightPay is always striving to make payroll easier

BrightPay is here to help payroll professionals perform even when faced with tough challenges. We are fully HRMC recognised, support all RTI submission types, and now offer payroll journal integration and the ability to batch process multiple employers simultaneously. At a time when so many of us are adapting to a new world order, BrightPay Connect, our optional cloud add-on product can help you supercharge your payroll & HR processes while offering you the flexibility and security of a secure cloud server that automatically backs up your payroll data and enables cloud features for the bureau, employer and employee.

Book a demo today or watch this short video to discover how BrightPay and BrightPay Connect can make payroll easier for your business.

What’s not to LOVE about BrightPay’s integration with FreeAgent

Together with FreeAgent, we’ve built a meaningful API integration to make payroll refreshingly easy while keeping your accounting simple. BrightPay produces the payroll journal in a file format that is unique to FreeAgent. Users can easily upload their payroll figures into their general ledger from within BrightPay using the FreeAgent API facility.

Connecting accounting and payroll means dead-simple reconciliation and consolidated journal entries, a much needed combination. This means each time you run payroll, a wage journal entry is created to send to your FreeAgent system. The BrightPay API facility eliminates the manual export and import process, automating tedious, repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

How does it work?

When you sign into your FreeAgent account in BrightPay, your nominal ledger accounts will be retrieved where users can simply map each payroll data item to the relevant nominal account. The payroll journal can include records for payslips across multiple pay frequencies. Users can include individual records for each employee or merge the records for each unique date.

Payroll Journal API integration with FreeAgent offers:

• Time Savings: Rather than manually inputting payroll data from one system to another, just import your wage journal straight into FreeAgent with a couple of clicks. 

• Automation: Every bureau and accountant wants and needs an automated system these days. The automation of BrightPay’s API facility will easily input payroll journal files straight into FreeAgent streamlining the payroll process even further. 

• Reduced Errors: BrightPay’s API facility will drastically reduce the chance of errors that could potentially be caused by manual data entry and time spent correcting those errors. 

Step by step guide to BrightPay & FreeAgent integration
Find out more about the BrightPay & FreeAgent integration

Posted byKaren BennettinAccounts Software

Customer Update: September 2020

Welcome to BrightPay's September update. Our most important news this month include:

• Furlough wind down timescales

• Do SEISS grants need to be paid back?

• Thresholds to rise for Student Loan repayment from 6th April 2021

Benefits of employee apps that you never knew (and why employees love them)

Easily integrate BrightPay with your accounting software 

Posted byRachel HynesinCustomer Update