The Umbrella Companies Blog Archive: December 2009
Home of Umbrella Company Gossip Online

So Christmas is finally upon us, diets are on hold, and everyone is looking forward to a little of indulgence with their family.

For those of you working next week, we will be here Tuesday to Thursday, and look forward to hearing from you (because as is always the case the week between Christmas ane New Year the phones will be quiet).

From everyone here at Gabem, we hope you have a fantastic and relaxing Christmas. Look after yourselves and have fun.

Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
24/12/2009

It's Wednesday the 16th of December and 9 days to go until the big day and I am still Christmas shopping. So far I've managed to do all of it over the internet, even the wrapping paper. I know I may have to resort to the high street at some point but it's nice to do these things electronically if you can.

With that thought in mind we have created an excel version of our expense form to take away the more repetitive aspects of expense submissions. The rest of our expenses policy doesn't change, we do still need original receipts and a signed hardcopy of your form, this is just here to stop you having to fill in the same details over and over. We have a few ideas in the works that should make expenses much easier to submit, but that's in the distant future. I will keep you updated as I get news.

A while back I mentioned that this year instead of sending out Christmas Cards we were going to donate money to charity, and asked you guys for suggestions of which charities you would like us to support. We settled on Save the Children, Cancer Research, Help the Aged, and the Construction Industry charity "The Lighthouse Benevolent Fund".

The last two years have not been great for charities, as in many cases they have been the first to suffer in the recession, so I hope this year other people have followed suit and made a donation instead of mailing.

I've been asked to mention holiday pay again because we are getting a few calls from people unsure of if their agency will be open to make payments over the Christmas period. I would encourage you to take a look at their opening hours or better yet payroll schedules, if there is any ambiguity remember that if you have holiday pay accrued we can pay it out to you as long as we know in advance.

Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
16/12/2009

Well the pre-budget report has come and gone with no real surprises, the focus was predictably on clawing back as much money as possible without upsetting anyone in the private sector that wasn't a banker hoping for a large bonus.

The key points as far as we are concerned are:

- Banks are being taxed 50% of any bonuses they issue exceeding £25,000 between now and April the 5th, the net result being that bankers will be receiving either 33% less of a bonus, or everyone is just waiting for April 6th.

- The higher rate of tax will be frozen, so they will catch a few more people because of inflation.

- Employees and Employers NI is being raised half a percentage point.

Most of the changes are due to take place in 2011, making the whole thing a bit of a moot point because of the general election that has to happen between now and then, and things might be changing.

The Employees and Employers NI is the one that will effect most of us, and although it's not pleasant, it's certainly not as bad as it could have been considering the recession as a whole. For those of you in construction though our umbrella company there is even a little silver lining in the form of the CIS holiday pay scheme. Due to the NI increase you'll now be saving more each week giving you a little more to spend whenever you want to take time off. And for those of you in construction who don't use Gabem yet call us for details of how to take advantage of our services.

Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
11/12/2009

One of the many positive things that came out of the Quality of Service Questionnaire we ran in June was that people liked our independence within the industry, and that they could be sure that when they joined our umbrella company that their details weren't leaving the Gabem offices.

We found this a little surprising as perhaps naively we had assumed that most umbrella companies were behaving in a similar fashion. I took upon myself the task of doing some background research on a random sampling of companies to see what I could find.

I'm going to come right out and say that from what I could see most companies had no obvious or unexpected links to other bodies in the contracting industry, so most of you can breathe a sigh of relief. That said a few companies had some very eye opening relationships, I'm not going to name names, but there were companies sharing private server space with recruitment firms and jobs boards, and other businesses catering to contractors.

It's not a cardinal sin of course, but it is one of those things that could compromise the impartiality of a service or mean you have to put up with additional marketing mail or calls. I can assure you that it's not a road we're going to go down, but it has been eye opening seeing what everyone else is up to.

Yours independently

Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
04/12/2009

The Christmasy people have finally been given the go ahead to turn on their lights and their music. A little early if you ask me but they seem happy and I suppose that's what counts. It couldn't happen soon enough for Susan who I suspect has had her tree up and decorated since early November.

Our Christmas promotion is still running - but ends soon - so if you know anyone looking for an umbrella company who would appreciate a £50 gift voucher point them our way. They might not be able to spend them in time for the lead up to Christmas, but it could be very handy for the January sales.

Sticking with the Christmas theme, our Christmas Opening hours are now up for your viewing pleasure. As you can see we're open as usual up until Christmas eve, and the following week we're working reduced hours (which are very welcome).

I have been asked to remind you that if you're one of our umbrella employees and are planning on taking some time off over Christmas, it's a perfect time to request your holiday pay because you'll have full tax and NI free allowances to be applied to it, meaning you'll take home more than if you took it in a week when you were being paid. Somewhat more importantly, holiday pay does not carry over each financial year, so if you don't take it before April it's gone, so the sooner the better really.

Hugo
@GabemUmbrella
03/12/2009