Help advice needed re employing casual help

Mistral001

paddyrg wrote: »

happily pay someone else to do it just to make it go away.

As such, perhaps he can employ them through a temping agency? Yes, he'll pay a premium, but against the extra cost and hassle of administering it, he may well still be ahead!

There are companies who will provide payroll services - I came across the owner of one a few years ago at an FSB meeting at any rate. I got my accountant to help me out with my PAYE a few years ago when I was just too busy to do it myself. Apparently he has people working for him who do nothing else but calculate wages and sort out NI, PAYE holiday entitlement etc. for firms.

paddyrg

We did actually use a payroll company - but even preparing the details, supplying P45's, submitting the weekly days/hours/holiday/etc added up to a big number of hours, some in discussion with the (very patient) payroll company about what all the numbers meant, when we had to pay various tranches of cash to them for payroll, Ni to HMRC, holiday pay, etc. On a job that lasted less time than it took HMRC to issue us with a PAYE reference number, it was a massive overhead. I wish I'd realised at the time and considered options.

It was the pensions thing that made me cry in the end - the company was a mayfly, existing long enough to make a movie in effect - yet we still had the same overhead as a supermarket employing hundreds of people over the course of decades. Including three (nice, expensive) accountants arguing over how the pension regulations should be applied in our case. Never again!

Savvy_Sue

If the people he wants to use don't want the bother of registering as self-employed, it's not really his problem if they actually are self-employed - if he keeps good records, he would never be expected to prove that he knew they were or were not registered.

However I think he gets better quality control if he uses a zero hours contract. If they all have other jobs paying enough to get them Statutory Sick Pay he'll never have to worry about that. He will have to pay holiday pay, but he can calculate that on a rolling basis and pay it quarterly as a separate sum. He'll want to factor that into what he's offering, it's 12.07% of the basic pay.

I think it's a mindset thing: your OH can say "I am the boss and I would like the job done in this way at this time and you have agreed to do it for me" rather than paying people to do him a favour, IYSWIM?

Also if it does expand so that he has regular work available, he can decide who's best to offer an ongoing contract to, and he won't be changing the basis of employment. If I were self-employed in this casual kind of way I wouldn't necessarily want to go onto PAYE if the job became more regular.

tkwad

DH decided against a zero hours contract in the end - when he looked into it the employee has certain rights which he wasn't totally comfortable with (ie, the employer doesn't have to offer work but when work is offered the employee has the right to turn it down) and he was concerned the bad press around them might put off people that could be good employees. He settled on a permanent contract with a short time working / lay off clause included.


This sounds interesting, can you give me any more details on this please? one man has agreed to do a 16 hours a week contract (minimum) but as I have said the work isn't guaranteed....

He's ended up recruiting on a part time basis. The employee is studying a related subject at the local college and spends 2 days a week at college and 3 days with DH. It's not an apprenticeship but means the employee is gaining work based experience which is linked with what he wants to do.

re Aquamania's post, regarding it not being your partner's or the "other party's" decision about being employed, this might help explain it a little... http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employment-status/index.htm[/QUOTE]

Thank you

AbbieCadabra

some info on zero hours here, plus other stuff (& free basic contract templates, best to get something personalised if it's more involved though), plenty of other info on google.

we've been in a similar situation & we decided to go down the zero hour route as it suits us & the employee. we should be able to give him at least a weeks notice if we'll need him in the following week & we wouldn't expect him to be available at short notice. it can be open to abuse & i think this is why it's gets bad press, but it can work if the circumstances are right & both sides are in agreement.

tkwad

AbbieCadabra wrote: »

some info on zero hours here, plus other stuff (& free basic contract templates, best to get something personalised if it's more involved though), plenty of other info on google.

we've been in a similar situation & we decided to go down the zero hour route as it suits us & the employee. we should be able to give him at least a weeks notice if we'll need him in the following week & we wouldn't expect him to be available at short notice. it can be open to abuse & i think this is why it's gets bad press, but it can work if the circumstances are right & both sides are in agreement.

Thanks for the link I will have a look at the templates. The nature of my partners work means it would be highly unlikely that a long notice period could be given... a couple of days maximum...I don't know if this is acceptable to write into a contract

AbbieCadabra

tkwad wrote: »

Thanks for the link I will have a look at the templates. The nature of my partners work means it would be highly unlikely that a long notice period could be given... a couple of days maximum...I don't know if this is acceptable to write into a contract

from my understanding, yes it would. but i think this is what part of the problem with these contracts is, some employers push it a bit with being specific that the employee should be available for work at all times, at short notice if applicable. obviously the other side is that the employee has the right to refuse work, this is part of the contract.

like i said, if it suits both sides & is agreed in advance, it can work.

explained in more detail, with links to further info, here on ACAS.

Savvy_Sue

I think if you can only give a couple of days' notice, you've got to be prepared to have more people to offer the work to than if you can give, say, a week's notice.

Also if you go through a spell where there is not work to offer, you can expect that people who really need the money will find work elsewhere, so won't be available when you next need them.

I'd suggest that you need to be up-front with people about this: no use saying "oh there's plenty of work" if it's very unpredictable.

Cazza

tkwad wrote: »

This sounds interesting, can you give me any more details on this please? one man has agreed to do a 16 hours a week contract (minimum) but as I have said the work isn't guaranteed....

There's some info on the .gov website about short time working etc here... https://www.gov.uk/lay-offs-short-timeworking/overview

I'd say this is a good one for you to talk through with ACAS so you can get into the specifics of what your DP wants/ needs out of the situation. MY DH wanted to be able to offer someone a permanent post but due to the nature of his work some days it's just not possible - an outdoor job might be delayed by snow & ice for example. He wanted to have scope to allow for something like this if he just didn't have work to offer or business dried up. He's a sole trader and looking to expand but you're just never completely certain how things will work out.

DH does pay holiday pay (ACAS advised that in this situation they reccommended not to "roll up" holiday pay, although it's perfectly legal to do so), the employee is entitled to redundancy pay and sick pay but DH dosen't offer anything in excess of the legal statutory amounts.

tkwad

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

I think if you can only give a couple of days' notice, you've got to be prepared to have more people to offer the work to than if you can give, say, a week's notice.

Also if you go through a spell where there is not work to offer, you can expect that people who really need the money will find work elsewhere, so won't be available when you next need them.

I'd suggest that you need to be up-front with people about this: no use saying "oh there's plenty of work" if it's very unpredictable.

It does indeed look like a larger base of people will be necessary for him to call upon, or he finds reliable self employed help that avoids any need for PAYE etc, or that my partner just takes on board work he can manage alone and save all this hassle.


There would never be anything but honesty involved I hope everyone can appreciate that with sporadic work like this and a newly formed business, if there isn't enough work he cant pay them out of thin air.