Dear Subscriber,

Each month we run a series entitled 'HR Doctor' where we invite our HR Consultant, Fiona Ward from our HR Business Services Division to answer a series of HR related questions.

Question: An employee has approached the company requesting if he could be home based. What do I need to think about when developing a case?

Answer: When considering if home working is viable for both the company and employees you will not only need to think about the hard facts or logistics but also the softer intangible aspects.

The first stage in developing a case and probably the easiest is to gather the facts. Look at the costs or savings to the business. Saving can include the cost of office space per employee. To calculate this, it is important to consider the wider financial costs such as rental, heating, electricity, communication etc. Costs the business will incur include setting up a working environment in the employee's home, the biggest of which will be equipment. There will be health and safety issues to consider, including whether the employee has an appropriate
working space. Look at technology which will help facilitate home
working. Finally assess the need to have people in the office; there may be roles homeworking will not suit.

The more intangible aspects will include what impact homeworking will have on productivity. It is worth considering that the business could end up with greater coverage of the working day as employees no longer have to commute and may choose to start work earlier or finish later.

If this is the case, it will be useful to develop a flexible working policy. It could also lead to greater employee motivation and be seen as an attractive benefit for recruitment and retention. On the minus side, homeworking could lead to less communication between employees particularly on an informal basis. To overcome this, the use of technology will be important and it is worth considering whether employees would be required to spend some time in the office on a weekly or monthly basis. Employers mustn't forget that work also has social aspect and some employees could end up feeling isolated. It is not for everyone. Finally the management style of the business may have to change, as managers will need new skills and attitudes when managing remote workers. Employees should be assessed on their achievements or outputs.

To discuss your HR Business Service requirements and the potential of obtaining Business Link funding for your project, please call 0191 438 7989 or 0113 243 0900. Alternatively, please check out our dedicated HR Business Services website page.

To read Fiona's profile please click here.

Written exclusively for 'HR News & Views':

HOLIDAYS, HOLIDAYS, HOLIDAYS

MONEY, MONEY,MONEY

 A reminder to all employers: the 1st April will soon be upon you, the day on which the second increase in holiday allowance under the Working Time Regulations takes effect.

As from the 1st April, employees will be entitled to 5.6 weeks paid holiday. This includes bank and public holidays and means that for the normal 5 day week, a full time worker now has a minimum holiday entitlement of 28 days a year including bank holidays.

Employers therefore need to ensure that all their employees’ receive this minimum entitlement to avoid potential Employment Tribunal claims. However, if your employees already receive paid time off for bank holidays in addition to four weeks holiday then you do not need to increase their entitlement.

Employers would be wise to also amend the contracts of employment to reflect the new holiday allowance. If you do not have contracts then you are strongly advised to seek professional advice and assistance: if you do have contracts, you would still be wise to have those contracts professional checked as Employment law is a fast changing field.

Another change worth noting is that from the 6th April, the rates of statutory maternity pay and statutory paternity pay rises from £117.18 a week to £123.06 a week and statutory sick pay, paid from the fourth day off sick, rises from £75.40 to £79.15 a week.

Barry Hutchinson is an employment specialist with Newcastle law firm, Gordon Brown Associates. He advises on all aspects of employment law and best practice in the workplace. He can be contacted on 0191 230 8103 or visit the website www.gordon-brown.co.uk

The end of the tax year approaches!

So what happens next? From a PAYE perspective this is a busy time for employers with a number of legal deadlines. All outstanding PAYE liabilities (tax and national insurance collected from employees) must be paid over to HMRC by April 19th. The employers annual end of year return (P35) which summarises the tax and NI collected, plus other statutory payment or deductions through the tax year, must also be collated and submitted to HMRC by 19th May, accompanied by P14s.

All employers with more than 50 employees must submit their P35 online. Smaller employers can still submit on paper but there is a small tax-free allowance available if submitted online.

The P14 emulates the P60 which is given to each employee to summarise their years pay. P60s must be distributed to all employees by 30th May.

Finally we come to the dreaded P11Ds and P11D(b)s, which must be submitted to HMRC and copied to the relevant employees by 6th July – three months after the tax year end. These are statements of (potentially) taxable benefits in kind. We’ll give you more information about these documents in the next newsletter.

BLU SKY LLP are Chartered Accountants focused on providing small businesses and self-employed people in the North East of England with personal, high quality accountancy & taxation services. More information can be found at www.bluskytax.co.uk

This month we will be looking at salaries of Learning and Development specialists.

Unlike more generalist forms of HR, it is likely that your typical L&D specialist will not have ‘started at the bottom’ and more likely will have moved from an all round HR role to specialise. Because of this, the sub-set doesn’t have the lower end salaries found with, for example, HR Administrators. Although it is clear that levels of progression exist within L&D, we have found there to be fewer tiers than within generalist HR where taking the leap from being an HR Administrator to an HR Director may take seven or eight promotions!However, because of the specialism required and also due to the invaluable and tangible benefits a good L&D practitioner can bring to an organisation, it is an area of HR which is historically well paid.

From our latest survey of L&D salaries across the North of England, we found average salaries to be:

L&D Specialist/Consultant
Range: £21,000 - £29,500
Average: £24,725

Learning and Development Manager
Range: £31,000 - £40,000
Average: £33,500

Head of Learning and Development
Range: £48,000 - £75,000
Average: £62,300

Next month we will look at comparisons of the salary of an HR Manager across a range of industries and sectors, showing the pay differences between public and private sector roles and also revealing the industry which currently rewards it’s HR Managers most highly.
For more information, please contact Gareth Harrison on 0191 4387989.