The Umbrella Companies Blog Archive: October 2008
Home of Umbrella Company Gossip Online

As well as the usual Friday buzz here at Waterside we have been getting into the Halloween spirit, with most of us planning some sort of macabre mischief over the weekend. Everyone has come dressed up as ghosts or ghouls - although with some of the IT guys its hard to tell them form a normal Friday. It's also "Wear it Pink" for breast cancer day and a couple of our creative customer service girls have managed to combine the two - as you can see!

And while on the subject of mischief, now is the time of year to be extra safety conscious with the dark evenings and chilly weather to ensure you don't do yourself a mischief!

If the worst happens and you are involved in a near miss, incident or accident don't forget to let us as well as the site know so that all the relevant reports can be filed with the Health & Safety Executive (HSE). If you are in Gabem Umbrella, we are your employer and responsible for keeping records as well as informing the HSE. Also, if you are injured in an accident don't forget to tell us because, with your accident insurance, you may be eligible for a payment.

Hopefully come Monday morning there will be nothing more serious to report than the odd drunken stumble or egg and flouring.

Have a scary and safe Halloween

Steve Girdler
31/10/2008

We have received news that the EU Agency Workers Directive has been agreed by all member states of the European Employment Council so I thought I'd be topical and try to give you an overview of what it could mean to the temporary and contract worker market and more importantly you individually.

You may remember that Susan spoke about the directive a while ago (and I will be consulting with Susan a lot over this, she clearly being the brains of this operation), but now we know it's being passed into law we can go into a little more detail.

Here's the short version of what the Agency Workers Directive aims to do. It's being introduced to give temporary workers the same rights as permanent employees of the hiring business. This is an EU driven directive whole heartedly supported by the Unions but less enthusiastically received by business. Why? Well, in Europe temporary working is relatively undeveloped (except perhaps in France). Whereas, in the UK temporary working has been around for over 50 years and is well established and an integral part of the UK economy.

To give you some perspective, the UK on it's own represents over 40% of the whole European temporary worker market, so it's inevitable, that the introduction of this Directive is going to have a greater effect on the UK than any other country.

Back in May, the Government, CBI (Confederation of British Industry representing business) and TUC (Trades Union Congress representing the unions) came to an agreement that the UK would implement the Directive in a modified form. Temporary workers would be entitled to equal rights with their permanent colleagues but only after 12 weeks of the assignment. In the rest of the EU it comes into effect as soon as a worker begins work.

The changes that it hopes to bring into effect are equal pay, vocational training, maternity pay, working time, and prevention of discrimination to name but a few. It does not cover pensions, sick pay and health, safety and hygiene.

Whilst the spirit of the regulations are positive the implications to the temporary worker market as a whole are huge. Agencies will have to become more transparent with their pricing and margins, end clients will have to disclose what benefits permanent employees enjoy (from the office canteen to childcare and training), and due to the directive taking effect after 12 weeks we can expect 10 or 11 week contracts becoming much more common. This could have a detrimental effect on those with long term temporary contracts as they essentially become more expensive to the end client.

There is bound to be a flurry of interpretation and comment over the months as the Directive is implemented in April 2009, and until we get closer to that date we're stuck with speculation and opinion. For the time being here are some of the questions we feel need answering:

Will this legislation apply to limited company contractors and freelancers as well as agency workers?

Will the equal pay legislation be applied to workers whose wage is currently above that of the permanent employees?

Who is going to foot the bill for the increase in benefits paid out to agency workers?

Will this have an effect on the working time directive?

Who's responsibility is it to ensure that these regulations are being met?

If you have any comments on this it would be great to hear them, and you can get in touch by clicking Hugo below. I should mention that the delightful Lynne will be blogging for you again this Friday which I am sure will be a welcome change. Have a great rest of your week.

Hugo
29/10/2008

Today's post is going to be closer to a public service announcement to keep you up to date with changes in things happening here.

Eileen, our customer services manager, has asked me to mention for all the umbrella company guys that the amount of fuel receipts you need to cover 100 miles of travel has gone up from £10 to £13, which given the current fuel costs I doubt is going to affect many of you. She also asked me to remind you that if you're going to be taking holiday next week because of half term, it would be a great time to claim your Holiday pay, as it won't interfere with your normal weekly tax allowance.

We've received the final draft of our newsletter "Free Agent" (the magazine formally known as The Bottom Line), and that will be going to the printers within the week, and should be with you inside a month. Just like the website we thought that the image and name of the newsletter needed updating. There's a competition with some great prizes all in time for Christmas so worth taking a look at.

Another thing that will be changing in the near future is our phone system. The new one will be an all singing all dancing system (number recognition that will bring up your details as the phone is picked up, things like that) and will be installed over the next month or so. You'll still be speaking to the same people as you always have, but now you won't have to wait for them to bring up your details (although the security checks will be the same). Our disaster recovery site has already been switched over, and we've arranged for the upgrade here to be done out of hours to avoid disruption.

That's about it for this week, I'll have a new blog for you Wednesday, and I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that Lynne will be blogging for you on Friday giving you a break from me. Have a great weekend and feel free to get in touch by clicking on Hugo below.

Hugo
24/10/2008

Well, so far this week has been very busy as we have been sending out information and the new brochures to the agencies you work through. They are the same brochures I linked to a couple of posts back (and now all those links will work) if you want to download them from there.

If you would like some hard copies of the brochure and the other bits and pieces of information, just get in touch and we'd be more than happy to send you a set (or several sets if you have friends that might be interested). We continue to work on updating the website so you should see a few more changes over the coming weeks. I would welcome your comments and suggestions. After all the improvements are geared towards making it better for you.

You might remember us going on about TUPE a while back, well it all went off without a hitch, and barring our calling a few people to sign forms I'd be surprised to hear if any of you noticed the transition. Those of you that have chosen the umbrella company option are now all employees of Gabem Management Limited, no more company numbers, we're all just one big a happy company.

Good luck for the rest of the week, and speak to you again on Friday.

Hugo
22/10/2008

If the experts are to be believed we are heading for tough times. We seem to have avoided a Global financial disaster but now, with unemployment on the increase and consumers battening down the hatches with their houses losing value the stock markets believe we are headed for a recession. Financial downturns are driven by a lack of confidence and this seems to be the case now. If people and companies have no confidence they will not invest, whether the new TV or houses or new machinery and new markets.

The result is the inevitable news of companies failing and people losing their jobs. The house builders have laid off thousands of people and financial institutions are doing likewise. Our industry is not immune from the economic downturn and there has been at least one Umbrella company closing its doors and rumours of more.

Speaking of confidence, one thing you can be confident about is that Gabem is in a strong position. Not just in our financial position - we have been around for 10 years and have known good times and bad. We are also not dependant on your money sitting in our account, which is why as soon as we have received your money from your agency we send it to your account in a same day payment.

In fact, we are so confident that we launched our new self-employed contract options (Gabem CIS and Gabem Solo) this week. This not only takes confidence but also significant investment. We worked closely with our legal and financial advisors (not cheap) to, make sure we have the best and legally compliant contract options for you. We have also re-designed, re-written and printed all our brochures and documents.

We have a double post from Susan for her legal bits this time around, and if you read the first one yesterday, another has been added asking about Gabem's role in lobbying on the behalf of contractors.

Have a great weekend and feel free to get in touch through the usual channels.

Hugo
17/10/2008

Well the launch of the new self employed payment options (CIS and Solo for the uninitiated) was a success and I for one am, pleased that some of the pressure is off so I can get the rest of the site up to speed and the blog back on a more normal weekly schedule.

We've been examining the self employment option since before April last year and, as I mentioned recently, we've re-structured our business to make sure you're getting a safe, flexible and compliant set of payment options.

We are really pleased with the number of people who are signing up for CIS and Solo. The first few people will be paid through the self employed systems this Friday with, we anticipate, more joining over the upcoming weeks.

We are finding that lots of people are moving into CIS or Solo from running their own limited or Personal Service Companies, one of the most common complaints being the volume of administration required to keep the companies running. What's quite revealing is the number of people calling us who are currently with a Gabem Umbrella Company and are deciding to stay with that payroll option. In hindsight this makes a fair amount of sense as it's probably the easiest way to get paid and you can claim expenses weekly rather than having to wait until the end of the year.

If you plan on staying with a Gabem Umbrella Company for the foreseeable future these changes give you the option of switching to a self employed payment option if your circumstances change. The end result is you can rely on Gabem to be your one-stop-shop for all your payment needs. In addition, we have started to make changes to our website, I hope you like them. There will be more, less dramatic changes over the next few weeks.

The site isn't the only thing to have changed, below are links to all the new brochures, application forms and various other forms that have been re-designed with our new look. Feel free to download them or just call our Customer Service team and they'll be happy to talk you through the new payment options and send you out information on anything you are interested in.

On a side note, Susan's Legal Bits will be updated at some point this week replying to a question that Susan received about the difference between CIS self employment and umbrella companies she was also asked about the security of "Offshore" payroll schemes. We are just waiting for permission from the sender of the email to put the text of the email here on the site. As soon as we have it I will put it up.

Anyway back to work. Here are those downloads as promised, and feel free to get in touch by clicking on Hugo below.

Gabem self employed and umbrella company brochure

Gabem Umbrella Company application form

Gabem Solo and CIS application form

Gabem marketing brochure

Gabem Benefits & Gabem Pensions

Gabem Personal Accident Insurance

(I'll post more with the blog as I get them)

Hugo
15/10/2008

Just a quick post today, it's been a busy week, and I had hoped to have everything done in time to tell you about it, but with things as they are that just hasn't been possible.

Our new services officially roll out at the beginning of next week, and I've been attempting to bring the website up to speed in time. We're having some big changes to the look and feel, which I think we can all agree have needed updating for a while.

For the time being here is the page that will help you determine your employment status, letting you know your options.

Anyway, have a great weekend, and maybe we'll try to have the new look up for you Monday

Hugo
10/10/2008

Other than the various financial scandals and horrors in the stock markets it's been a pretty quiet week, so today we've got a mostly public service post for you.

First of all we have the annual minimum wage change, a minor change this year from £5.52 per hour to £5.73 per hour for anyone aged 22 and over. As a result holiday pay will also be increasing from £0.56 per hour to £0.58 per hour again for anyone 22 or over. For most of you I realise this is almost non-news (the impact on your weekly wage will be on average just pence), but it's something we get questions about each year.

The only really interesting thing (okay it's not that interesting but it's more interesting than the last paragraph), is that apparently despite the minimum wage changing each year in October around a third of small businesses are "not fully aware" of the increase leaving them open to fines of up to £5,000 (all those stats are care of Bibby Financial).

It's probably also worth mentioning at this point that when negotiating a contract, a rate increase of about 5% each year should keep you above the rate of inflation. Those of you in IT may also want to take a look at ITJobswatch which tracks the the averages of all sorts of IT jobs. If you have any other contract negotiation tips email them in and I'll try to post them here.

The final two public service announcements are from customer services; the first is a request for you to keep your email updated as over the next couple of weeks we will be sending out information about the new services, and for speeds (and the environments) sake we'd like to send some of it by email where possible. The second was another request, this time for those of you that have received a text from us about the Agency Regulations opt out, to get in touch as we need to change your choice on our system before October 13th.

Well that's it for this week, next week you can expect a lot of talk about our new services and other more exciting things. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Hugo
03/10/2008