Furlough | don’t just kick the can down the road…

As well as keeping employees on furlough, you were able to bring them back on a part-time basis from 1 July 2020 and still claim the furlough grant for the time they weren’t working.

If you’re planning to have any employee remain on furlough (full or part-time) after July, you should think about the reasons why and also the increasing cost to you of doing so:

• From 1 August
  you’ll no longer be able to claim any NI or Pension costs for those employees on furlough.
• From 1 September
  you’ll still need to pay any employee on furlough 80% of their usual wage but can only claim 70% of it back – so you’ll have to take the 10% hit yourself.
• From 1 October
  you’ll still need to pay any employee on furlough 80% of their usual wage but can only claim 60% of it back – so you’ll have to take the 20% hit yourself.
• From 1 November
  the furlough grant disappears all together.

Don’t just kick the can down the road…

Your Salon is now open again and doing really well in these first few weeks, as Clients clamber over each other to get themselves spruced up after lockdown.

But the new ‘normal’ will soon be with us, and this could mean business as usual (as pre-lockdown) or a reduced demand (or somewhere in between).

With the continued requirement for PPE & sanitation unlikely to go away anytime soon, and possibly a change in your Clients’ behaviours (less cuts and colours per year?), we just don’t know what the ‘new normal’ will look like.

Anyway, it’s unlikely it’ll be as good as it is in these first few weeks of re-opening?

So it’s worth considering any of your staff still furloughed: if you don’t need them now, will you need them going forwards? Is it fair to keep them furloughed? Are you ok with the increasing cost of doing so? Or are you just putting the decision off?

It’s a tough thing to think about but something that needs to be done.

All the detail here:

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme | Furlough part 2: June->October 2020