Advice LBV Hub Business Support

What is the National Minimum Wage?

As mentioned in the title, the National Minimum Wage is the minimum pay per hour almost all workers are entitled to. It doesn’t matter how small your company is, you still have to legally pay the correct minimum wage to your employees. If your employee is over the age of 25 ( pre-April 2021) or 23 ( post-April 2021) they are instead entitled to the National Living wage rate.

Your employees are entitled to the correct rate or NMW or NLW even if they are:

• Part-time
• Casual staff
• Agency workers
• Paid on commission
• Apprentices
• Trainees
• On probation
• Disabled
• Foreign or offshore workers employed by a UK business

What happens when employers underpay?

The cost of underpaying your employees can be detrimental to your reputation and affect your business financially.

Employers that fail to pay workers at least the National Minimum Wage must pay back any underpayments owed to the employee. There is also a large fine of up to 200% of arrears capped at 20,000 per worker which is paid to the government.

For example, you may have seen that recently a number of well-known organisations have been named and shamed publicly for National Minimum Wage failures, and this has led to a number of unwelcome fines and damage to their reputation publicly.

• 47% wrongly deducted pay from their worker's wages, including for uniforms and expenses.
• 30% failed to pay workers for all the time they had worked, such as when they worked extra...

Read Full Story: https://www.lancashirebusinessview.co.uk/latest-news-and-features/national-mi...