COVID-19 Furloughed staff & training (show/hide message)
Please note, you can ask furloughed staff to undertake training to remain upskilled whilst away from work under the latest guidance of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme criteria.
However, they must be paid at least the National Living Wage (NLW) / National Minimum Wage (NMW) for the time spent training even if this is more than the 80% of their wage that will be subsidised. This means that you will need to top-up staff wages to ensure that the additional hours of training (work) they are being asked to do, doesn’t take them below the NLW/NMW thresholds.
To avoid breaching this requirement and to demonstrate compliance in any potential HMRC audit you may want to set out the time you expect an employee to spend completing online training in a defined period (eg.4 hours per week / 16 hours per month) and pay them the statutory minimum wage for those hours. If you are confident that the 80% of their usual salary keeps them above the statutory minimum wage then this may not be necessary.
Try our FREE courses today:
25% discount on NDNA courses for members
Join NDNA