My work environment is Age UK that is a charity organization that deals with charity for the older people. It has several charities group but of all which operate under a common umbrella which include Age Scotland, Age NI and Age Cymru. They operate on different levels and independently, but they all function under Age UK as they are all interrelated. They raise the funds through various means that includes both fundraising and also they raise income from conducting some financial activities though their commercial service department.

Right from the hiring process, legislation provides for equal provision of the recruitment process. The law is highly against any form of discrimination that may arise on base of race or sex. Legislation requires that people should not be discriminated according to their age or the number of years that they have been in the employment. On this note, Age UK provides a transparent recruitment process that is free and fair, all people, provided they are in a position to do the job that is being offered are free to apply for the job (Liff, 2010). After abolishing the retirement age, the hiring process was made more open and today, people who are even older than sixty five years can apply for the job and be hired as the same as the younger employees. The only qualification that the people hiring the employee should focus while the hiring process is the competence of the employee, each employee that is hired should be competent enough and in a position to do his or her activities.

There is a transparent hiring process to avoid any discrimination on the basis of gender. All people, regardless of their gender have equal opportunities to be hired; this is in line with the legislative requirements which state that, no employee gets discriminated on the basis of his or her gender (Healey, 1993). In Age UK, all people have equal chances of being hired, to ensure that strict guidelines about the hiring process get maintained, the organization has established a platform to report any incidents that the employee came across discrimination. The employee needs to fill the form that is available on the organization website and report any reason that they feel that they got discriminated on the basis of gender or any other basis such as race.

There is a statutory requirement that requires that all employers should issue a statement to the new employees which have the particulars of the employment. The statement should be issued to the employees on the first eight weeks of employment is the final indication of the acceptance of both employee and employer of the execution of duties (Busse, 2004). The agreement of the hiring could be verbal where both the employee and the employer agree on the employment terms verbally, or it could be on writing where both the employees and the employer write down the terms of employment. An employee who has been hired in Age UK is entitled to that information. The employee is entitled to first know whether he gets covered under the employment contract or a casual worker who is only under contract with no standard employment terms. The employee is entitled to this notification through writing where the notice is set to him or her within eight weeks of hiring. The notice indicates the term of employment indicating clearly whether the employee is a temporary or permanent worker.

An employee hired by Age UK organization is entitled to the various rights as stipulated by the statutory employment rights. First, immediately after being hired, the employee should be served with a written terms of employment (Outten and Kinigstein, 1984). The written statement will be useful in case of any disputes between the terms of employment between the employee and the employer. The employee is entitled to have 28 days of paid annual leave.

The employee and the employer must also agree on the payment method; this is to ensure convenience in the payment of the employee. The employee is allowed to choose the mode of payment that may include either through a bank or other means that the employee may term as more convenient (Outten and Kinigstein, 1984).

In Age UK, the employee is only liable for working for 48 hours a week. The requirement is in line with the statutory requirement that dictates that no employee should be forced to work in an organization or company for more than 48 hours in a week. Age UK reserves the rights of determining how the hours will be distribute according to the work demand but on the same note the schedule and the amount of hours that an employee works continuously should be reasonable (Liff, 2010). If the work becomes more than it was previously anticipated and the employee is compelled to work more than six hours continuously in a single day, there must be a twenty minutes break after the six hours. The break seeks to make sure that the employee is not overworked to a level that can certainly cause fatigue. If an employee is a daily worker and reports to the organization on a daily basis, he or she is entitled to eleven hour break. In between one working day and the next one, employees must rest for eleven hours so as to give them time to rest.

The employees of Age UK are also entitled to flexible working environment. Although it might not have a direct impact on the payroll system, it will help avoid under or overpayment from the services delivered outside the normal working periods. The organization provides a flexible working environment for the carers (Reilly, 2001). They get flexible conditions once in a year where they are allowed to either work from home or work on different hours. It is their rights to request for the flexibility for var5ious reasons and hence, the employees should accept their requests, however, in case the employer is not comfortable with the flexibility, he, or she should give satisfactory reasons so as to show because the disapproval. Besides the carers, the rest of the employees do not have a statutory right of demanding the flexibility in their work environment.

Legislation provides for the provision of the Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) in case the employee is sick and is unable to report to work. Age UK provides for the payment of SSP to the employer for 28 weeks in case the employee is too ill to be able to perform his or her duties. In order to get the SSP, an employee must have been off work sick for more than four days consecutively either on working or non-working days (Starling, 2003). The state stipulates a calculator so as to identify the amount of SSP that an employee is entitled to; the organization pays a similar or more amount as the state stipulates. The employee would receive more amounts if he or she had a sick pay scheme. However, even if the employee had no such scheme, the organization must compensate amount that is not less than the statutorily required amount.

There is a statutory requirement on the redundancy pay of the employee which stipulates the minimum amount of remuneration that an employee should get. It stipulates that the employer has a duty to ensure that the employee gets the minimum pay that is stipulated. In determining the minimum amount of entitlements that an employee can receive, the state focuses on various terms that will include the value and amount of service that the employee offers the employer (Starling, 2003). In Age UK, the employees who are aged even above 65 years will be entitled to redundancy pay that is calculated the same way as that of the younger people.

If an employee is redundant in the course of their employment, he or she is entitled to 1.5 week payment for all the days that he or she was above 41 years. The week’s pay can be estimated as £380 per week. The employee is also entitled to one week pay for which they were under 41 years. The redundancy period is limited to a maximum of 20 years under which the employee was under the employment (Hornstein, 2001). The main reason the older people continue to be paid higher amounts is because of the number of years they have provided the organization with their services. Older people might not have good chances as compared to the young people of securing employment, for this reason, they are entitled to higher amounts. However, age should not be used as a factor to determine redundancy, this helps avoid any instance of discrimination that the employees might be exposed to.

There is a statutory requirement that the payroll gets finalized by the provision of an itemized pay statement that is presented in writing. In compliance with this requirement, Age UK provides all its employees with a pay slip (Starling, 2003). The pay slip provides all the information about the payment of the employees. The pay slip includes gross salary and the deductions that are made in a particular period. The payments will be made once per month for the permanent employees of the organization and on different agreed for the casual workers in the organization. All deductions that are made are clearly indicated including the period on which they cover. Just as legislation stipulates, deductions are made for a maximum of twelve months is a single deduction period. However, only the employees of the organization are entitled to the pay slip. All other beneficiaries of the organization can only claim for compensation on the agreed terms but not on payslip terms.

To comply with the statutory requirements about the deductions of the employees, the company has set up clear deductions plan. First the pay slip will be presented with income tax already deducted and any other contribution that is stipulated by the state. Besides the statutory deduction required, the employer has a statutory right to deduct other amounts. However, before the organization makes any deductions, it must ensure that they meet the necessary statutory requirement (Starling, 2003). The compliance to this gets established by either provision in the employment act which allows for the deduction or if the employee agrees in writing to accept the deduction. No deductions can be made or varied in the employees’ payslip if the employee gets no consultation before the deductions.

However, in Age UK there are employees who offer their services as volunteers. Volunteers are people who will give their service at no fee. Since Age UK is a social charity organization, many people will volunteer to be carers and to provide other services to the aged people (Lauffer and Gorodezky, 1977). As opposed to the employees, volunteers are not entitled to any pay. The organization might decide to reward the employees on certain basis according to the types of services that the volunteers offer. However, the organization is not liable to paying the volunteers any amount. Any amount that the organization decides to pay gets recognized as a sacrifice and the volunteers cannot demand higher remuneration.

The state stipulates that the employee should be paid fairly for the services that an employee renders to the employer. The amount of pay can get determined by various factors, but it must be fair enough justifying the payment of a particular amount. In compliance to this requirement, employees are remunerated differently depending on the various factors (Outten and Kinigstein, 1984). In Age UK, different employees will be remunerated differently depending on the service that they render to the organization. Employees who conduct more technical work get paid higher amounts than those employees that do less technical work. Full time employees are paid higher amounts than the part time employees as part time employees are in a position to hold another employment opportunity while full time employees cannot hold the position.

Recommendation on Discrimination during Hiring

Although the organization has established reporting platform which individuals who feel that they get discriminated can report to, the process is too complex that it sometimes loses meaning. Discrimination is a major challenge in today and to avoid any problems it should be fully addressed. The problem cannot be fully addressed with the current procedures that the victim has to follow. Due to this, sense of urgency in the reporting process should be established; there should be an established department that deals purely with the discrimination issues. With a department that purely focuses on disciplining the discriminatory employees, it will be easier to deal with the discriminatory complaints that arise (Padavic and Reskin, 2002). The parties that suffer the discrimination will be more comfortable reporting to them as the department will be able to identify the level of damage done to the party and consequently identify the best possible remedy.

Recommendations for the Workers Flexibility

Employees will work best if they have a flexible working environment where they can work in the way they feel is best suited to them. According to the legislation, only carers have a flexible working environment (Reilly, 2001). For this reason, carers can be observed to have better delivery of their duties. On this note, all employees should be provided with a flexible working environment; the flexibility will range from the adjustment of working hours and changing of the location where the work is to be done. For more efficiency in performance, the employees should be provided with more flexible working environment which will encourage them to work harder.

Recommendation on Employees Rights

Although there is clear statutory stipulation about the employment contracts, some employees do not know their rights and duties towards the employer. Many employees will still go overboard on their expectations about their rights (Baker, 2007). Since there might be problems that arise from the expectations of the employees, the organization should focus on training the employees. Employees should receive training on their roles and responsibilities which should be clearly distinguished from their rights. As much as the employees have the rights in the employer’s environment, they should remember that they also have responsibilities of which they should perform so as to make it possible for them to have full access of their rights.

Recommendations on the Payroll

There is a clear statutory requirement that the payroll reaches the employee with all the deductions indicated. On this note, the organization should ensure that the employees receive their pay slip before the actual payment period (Bragg, 2013). Provision of the pay slip before the pay day seeks to make sure that the disputes that might arise about any item in the pay slip are tackled and solved before the payment date.

Conclusion

In conclusion, from the above extensive explanation, it is clear that the organization has been able to comply with most of the statutory requirements of the payroll system. However, there are still some loopholes that the organization needs to check. However, most of these loop holes are not meant to improve on the statutory requirements but rather on the performance of the employees. If the identified weaknesses receive the necessary attention according to the recommendations, then there will be a major improvement in the employee performance.

References

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