The autumn budget has come and gone and the government has reiterated NI contributions will increase by 1.25% from April 2022. It may be worth putting that in your diary to remind employees and avoid being inundated with payroll queries.

The government sets a national minimum wage and a national living wage. What is the difference you may ask? The minimum wage relates to those employees aged between 16 and 22. The living wage applies to employees over 23 years of age. Its worth mentioning that apprentices aged 16 and 17 get a different rate of pay. The national living wage will rise from £8.91 per hour to £9.50 in April 2022.

Just to complete the topic there is also a real living wage which is not connected to the government but setup by the living wage foundation who encourage employers to pay a wage that reflects everyday costs in the UK. According to their data in 2021 the real living wage is £9.50 per hour.

It is expected that the coming year will continue to see unprecedented churn in the UK workforce meaning many employers will be processing lots of starters and leavers . How do you know what your employee turnover is and measure it? To measure employee turnover you take the total number of leavers (all voluntary and involuntary) over a time period and calculate the average. A healthy turnover rate to aim for is approx 10%. To put that in context the UK average turnover rate pre pandemic was 15% whilst last year it was 53%.