How should ad-hoc pay be calculated?

Louismum

I'm a permanent employee who has been on Special Unpaid leave (with a right to return to work) for a couple of years whilst my children are very young. Earlier this year, my employer contacted me to see if I would like to help them out with some ad-hoc part-time project work which I could do mostly from home. I've really benefitted from the experience and have enjoyed being with colleagues again. However, I don't think they are paying me right and I'd welcome some advice.

I was told I'd be paid on my old rate (adjusted for standard increments) according to the number of days I work each month. I keep a timesheet and submit the number of days at the start of the following month - normally it's around 9-10. I thought my pay looked too low and when I queried it, it turns out that they have calculated my pay by taking my full-time pay rate, dividing it by 12 to get a monthly rate, and then dividing it be the number of calendar days to get a daily rate. They then times that daily rate by the number of days I've worked.

I've pointed out that I think they should divide the monthly rate by the number of working days in the month (or alternatively divide the annual salary by the number of working days in a year), and then times that by the number of days worked. My full-time colleagues have to work 20-21 days per month to get their salary, whereas I would have to work 31 days to get the same amount.

Surely they can't be right? I've queried it with the pay clerk and with the pay manager but they insist they are right. I was wondering if anyone knew of anything I could point them to to get them to rethink. This is a large organisation, and I'm not in a union. The project is coming to an end in a few weeks, and if I don't get it sorted soon I can't see me ever getting the proper amount of money. Many thanks in advance.

Nebulous2

It's not right. That is a common way of calculating days pay for a part month at the start or end of employment. You do their calculation them multiply it by days employed to get a part month payment.

It doesn't work for your situation. More common for your circumstances would be an hourly rate. Annual pay divided by 52 divided by full-time weekly hours would be close enough.

Then multiply by hours worked to get your gross pay.

Annual leave would then need to be added, with several options as to how that was done.

Takeaway_Addict

Get your hourly wage and asked to be paid on the number of hours due to the adhoc basis.

Louismum

Many thanks for the replies. The reason why I was told to record my hours and then convert it into days was so that I would be eligible for pension payments apparently.

Nebulous2

Louismum wrote: »

Many thanks for the replies. The reason why I was told to record my hours and then convert it into days was so that I would be eligible for pension payments apparently.

There is nothing wrong with converting into days if they are paid properly. Paying days worked on a calendar day basis is not how it should be done though.

burnoutbabe

We do it on a annual salary divided by 260. Basically excluding weekends, to work out a daily rate.

getmore4less

Go back they are doing it wrong point out that you will have to start adding 2 days ever 5 to take account of the weekends.

This probably come under the non discrimination of part time workers.

Don't forget they also need to to pay the holiday pay that accrues.

easiest way is as a % holidays in weeks/(52 - holiday in weeks)

so if statutory 28 days(5.6 weeks) 5.6/46.4 = 12.07%
if you normally get more than statutory the % rate goes up.


Also very convenient they still have you as a contracted employee as that should give continuity of employment for redundancy and notice.

comeandgo

Show them if they were to use their calculation and say you were to work a full month you would only get about two thirds of your full time wage.

Louismum

Many thanks for these reply - sorry I'm only reply now but I've been out all day. Will email them back and hopefully get this sorted out. It just seemed so obvious to me that they should be calculating my pay according to working rather than calendar days that I was a bit gob-smacked that they didn't realise that too!! And good point about the holiday pay, as I haven't had any leave yet and it hasn't been mentioned!