A new study highlights the growing health impact of the cost-of-living crisis, an impact that is felt most acutely by the young. In this blog we often try to pull together disparate data sources to try and make some sense of the various payroll and workforce related studies published each month. This post is a perfect example of that, and it starts with a headline in HR News: “Gen Z employees are taking significantly more sick days than their older peers” it read. The article was reporting on a study by Health Shield Friendly Society, the workplace health benefits specialist. According to the ..read more

This month, The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill gained Royal Assent. Designed to ensure employers distribute tips and gratuities fairly and without deductions, The Tipping Act (as it’s informally known) will come into force in 2024. But will it have a positive effect? We’ve all been there. Whether it was a student bar job or a permanent position with the restaurant chain, hotel group or nightclub, we’ve all had the employer who takes the cost of breakages out of your wages. Or who pays tips at the end of the year. Or worse still, who ensures you never see the tips at all. Fortunately, suc ..read more

International payroll has been transformed by technology. So what difference does that make to you and your business?  You’d be hard pressed to find any industry anywhere that hasn’t been impacted by technology. Tech has certainly transformed international payroll services. In this post, we explore how.  1. Automation of payroll processes If you were ever responsible for running payroll back when technology played a minimal role, you’ll know the issues you faced every month trying to calculate wages and deductions and generate payslips. Every month, figures that should have reconcile ..read more

As a new report reveals the stress, anxiety and burn-out of juggling careers and parenthood, we examine a trend that’s been years in the making and is affecting parents, children and employers.  ‘Parents need more support at work as parenting challenges increase’. That was the finding of the Modern Families Index, which found a third of parents were experiencing burnout juggling their work and parenthood, while 90% said they found balancing responsibilities stressful.  Full disclosure: this data doesn’t come from a recent survey. It’s from a report published in 2018, pre-Covid, pre c ..read more

A bill currently progressing through Parliament could reduce the age and wage at which employers and employees start paying into pensions.   Given the seismic upheavals in virtually every other area of life over the past few years, the world of pensions auto-enrolment has been happily controversy free for the past few years. Aside from tweaking the contribution rates, not much has changed, but now a new Private Member’s Bill currently making its way through Parliament may herald the biggest shake up to the system since its launch.  What are the pension auto-enrolment changes? Introdu ..read more

When your business goes global, a whole new set of considerations come into play when it comes to choosing your international payroll partner. So what are the key considerations for helping you choose the right global payroll provider?  Domestic payroll can be complex enough. A near infinite whirl of tax and NI rules, compliance standards and data security requirements make life difficult. Ever-changing legislation makes it harder still. No wonder so many organisations choose to outsource their payroll.  But if you think domestic payroll is enough to bring you out in a cold sweat, th ..read more

Is exclusion and bullying adding to the numbers of over-55s who’ve escaped the workplace? If so, what should employers do about it?  You can’t have failed to notice that, since the start of the pandemic, there’s been a growing over-55s-shaped hole in the UK workforce. We’ve tended to accept the oft-repeated view that this is down to health reasons. Yet evidence over the past few months countered this.  As the FT reported in 2022, of those in their 50s and early-60s who had recently retired, the prevailing reason was not for ill health, although ill health was the major reason for old ..read more

If you haven’t been using all your pension annual allowance for the past few years – and if you can afford to – now might be a very good time to boost that pension pot.  You have a workplace pension. All your workforce does. Most won’t be bumping up against the tax-free thresholds because, at time of writing the day after the Chancellor’s Budget, those are hefty thresholds. You’d need to put more than £40,000 a year into your pension to find yourself paying 25% tax on anything above £40,000 (although that figure does include all contributions, including from employers and tax relief).&nbs ..read more

Scammers are preying on the communication cracks that appear when people work from home, says accountants BDO.  A few weeks ago, one of your European supply partners started calling about a new order. You hadn’t dealt with them before, but they’ve called a couple of times since. They mentioned they’d spoken to your head of procurement and they seemed up to speed about what’s happening in the business so you had no reason to suspect they were anyone other than who they said they were. You’ve got on rather well actually.  So when they ask you to make a bank transfer, you did it.  ..read more

Expanding your organisation globally can be both exciting and challenging as you begin to hire and pay employees in different countries. Having a global payroll and HR provider with the expertise and knowledge to fully support your organisation can make all the difference in helping you thrive in a new market. Whether you’re reassessing your current global payroll and HR solution or just starting out on your expansion journey, this webinar is for you. We’ll help you understand how to assess your organisation’s requirements and what to consider when choosing a provider. Plus we’ll give you a br ..read more