Agile HR Newsletter March 2022

Preparing for the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage increases – 2022

Each year the national minimum wages and national living wages increase and it is important for businesses to be aware of these changes to ensure they remain compliant and that their employees are paid the minimum or above.

This year the NMW and NLW will increase to the following:

How to prepare for the increases:

1. Understand how many employees will be affected by the changes – how many employees are you paying the minimum or close to the minimum wages?
2. Run reports on the ages of your employees so you know which band they are in and when they are due to be moving to the next band;
3. Keep up to date on when apprentices move into their 2^nd year;
4. Make sure that your first pay day in April reflects these changes and not any later;
5. Ensure you have budgeted for these changes in the 22/23 financial year.

It’s also important not to forget the employees who are currently paid above the minimum. This could include those who are in a senior role, have additional duties or hold certificates that set

them apart and justify a higher salary than their colleagues however, when the minimum salary increases, the gap closes. You may wish to review their salaries to ensure a fair reflection for their achievements, position and efforts.

For further information on the above, please contact [email protected]

Quarterly Reviews

Conducting feedback on a quarterly basis can benefit your employees, your managers and your organisation.  

• Address performance issues quickly
• Work out a plan to help the employee improve 
• Ensure improvements are happening 
• Give managers more opportunities to address and reinforce great behaviours and practices. 

Frequent feedback helps your teams grow and improve over time and keep focused on objectives and targets throughout the year. Your team will then understand that their performance is aligning with company objectives, it gives them a road map and motivation for improvement. 

Whilst current thinking is that reviewing on a quarterly basis is more effective than reviewing annually to truly maximise their impact, it is important for managers to provide ongoing feedback on a regular weekly or fortnightly basis with 1:1 meetings. This results in building good habits and processes while working to strengthen areas identified for improvement. 

For more detail on the Agile HR Quarterly ‘RoadCheck’ please contact [email protected]

Understanding your personality through psychometrics

Psychometric tests are questionnaires designed to measure individual difference in a number of areas such as intelligence, ability, personality and motivation. They provide a powerful insight into why people make the decisions they make and why they behave in the way they do. Psychometrics also help to predict a person’s future behaviour and performance and therefore are an instrumental tool in business planning.

Psychometrics can be used for:

• Recruitment and selection
• Personal, team and leadership development
• Career coaching and management

Agile HR offers a range of psychometric profiling tools that can be completed online:

• Ability testing (verbal and numerical reasoning) particularly useful for Graduate Assessment
• Personality Profiling
• Leadership ‘De-railer’ profiling

Benefits are huge – 

• Avoid and resolve conflicts
• Play to your strengths
• Identify gaps in your team
• Enable self-understanding and so reduce stress
• Provide you as a manager with the understanding to give effective feedback
• Helps make your personal development plan
• Work together more effectively
• Inform your own and others’ decision making
• Develops your thinking skills
• Develops your emotional intelligence
• Identify and develops your strengths and weaknesses
• Develop leaders, managers, teams

To access our range of psychometrics please contact [email protected]