Payroll Advice & Salary Guide

Salary guide

The topic of private staff salaries and payroll can be complicated, so we have put together a salary guide and some helpful advice on how to pay your employees.

The guide below provides an average of candidate salaries per role (listed in gross per annum). Once we have established your exact job specifications, we can advise you more accurately.

A suitable salary for each individual position will always depend on a host of considerations, including:

• hours/days required
• accommodation available (relevant for live-in roles)
• frequency of travel expected
• skills, qualifications, languages & level of experience of the candidate
• any level of risk present (relevant for close protection & security driver roles)

Payroll services

As an Employer, there can be lots to think about when hiring domestic staff; such as contracts, payslips, P60’s, registering with HMRC, tax, National Insurance & pensions contributions.
How much do I pay my staff and how is it paid? Do I pay their tax? Do I pay them weekly or monthly? Am I legally obliged to make an employer pension contribution? Do I need to pay sick/holiday/maternity pay?
These are all questions we are often asked by our clients and the good news is, there is help at hand. Payroll, tailored contracts, payslips, HR support and legal queries regarding your domestic staff can all be handled for you. We recommend a payroll service such as Stafftax or Nannytax depending on the role of your employee. For a small monthly fee, payroll is dealt with for you and any filing with HMRC is seen to on your behalf. Payslips are automatically issued, and a dedicated team are there to answer any questions you may have regarding payroll, contracts, and statutory leave. If this is a route you would like to take and need our assistance, please let us know.

Salary & pensions calculator

There is no doubt that calculating a salary can be unclear territory, however, there are ways to keep it simple.
If a candidate is wishing to negotiate their salary or pay rise in a net per week salary, a useful tool for any employer is a salary & pensions calculator It shows you exactly what is payable in net and gross figures including any tax and National Insurance payable plus employer pension contributions. We recommend any employer investigates this thoroughly before making a formal offer to a candidate and please remember we are here to help with all negotiations.

Net per week, gross per annum, hourly or weekly?

Our advice to any employer taking on domestic staff for the first time would be to negotiate a job offer via the agency in terms of a ‘gross salary’. This takes any tax, NI & pension contributions into account so there are no surprises later.

The salary for each role within the private staff industry can be anything but straightforward and isn’t always advertised in the same way across all agencies. For example, positions can often be advertised at an ‘annual gross salary’ and others in ‘net per week’. The reason for this is that historically, certain positions would fall under weekly payroll and others monthly payroll and as a result, a select few candidates are now familiar with this established method of calculating their salary.

The majority of full-time domestic staff are now paid monthly, however, the ‘net per week’ calculation seems to have remained the primary way certain candidates view and negotiate their salary. Housekeeping, childcare and domestic couple salaries are still often advertised as ‘net per week’, with most other roles as a ‘gross annual salary’.

There is one further exception, which is a ‘gross hourly/daily rate’. This only applies to freelance candidates such as part-time housekeepers, nannies and maternity nurses or perhaps a Chef or PA whose services you may only require for a few days or weeks at a time. These candidates will be self-employed and will invoice you for any work done on an ad-hoc basis. Such freelance candidates are fully responsible for declaring their own tax.

Net per week conversion example and why you must exercise caution

Here is an example of a ‘net per week’ salary, how that converts to a ‘gross annual’ salary and what that actually means to you as an employer.

A Housekeeping candidate may be asking for £550 net per week, however, the amount the employer will in fact be paying (including tax, National Insurance & pension contributions) is £745 gross per week. When calculating that salary annually, the candidate would net £28,600, however, the total cost to the employer is £43,830.

Take care when interviewing a candidate and ensure you are both in agreement before making an offer. To ensure a stress-free and smooth process when hiring a new staff member, our advice to every client is to complete any salary negotiations through the agency.

(Tax & contributions calculated May 2020).