Friday saw the coming into effect of further employment regulations dealing with the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Their purpose is to ensure that various statutory entitlements based upon the calculation of “a week’s pay” and connected with the termination of employment are not reduced as a result of an employee being furloughed, including:
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- notice pay
- redundancy pay
- time off to look for employment or arrange training
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Put simply, in calculating a week’s pay for these purposes the employer must use the rate of pay payable under the employee’s contract of employment, not the reduced rate of pay that the employee has received whilst furloughed. For employees whose earnings vary, where a weeks’ pay is determined by reference to the average of the 12 weeks preceding the calculation date, the remuneration payable for those weeks is to be calculated on the basis of what would have been payable had the employee not been furloughed.
For further advice on this or any other HR or Employment Law issue, please contact a member of our team on 01942 727200.
