10 Halloween horrors for reward managers

Forget scary carved pumpkins, spiders, ghosts and ghouls, here are some true horrors to keep you awake at night:

1. Rising IPT
Insurance premium tax (IPT) rises from 6% to 9.5% next week. Reward managers may have to be scary slashers to keep benefits budgets in check.

2. Including bonuses in gender pay gap reporting
Don't get us wrong, we believe gender pay equally is long overdue. But trying to work out exactly what pay (and now bonuses) includes gives us the shivers.

3. Breaching the national minimum wage
The list of those employers breaching the national minimum wage was published this week. That’s a list no reward manager wants to find their company on, even unintentionally. (Many of us thought of the Monsoon Accessorize pay team with sympathy here).

4. Other employers can afford the new National Living Wage, but not you
Who can forget that the National Living Wage comes into play next April? Surely not retailers as they watch the likes of Aldi and Lidl jump ahead of the pay game. Plenty of reward managers are searching down the back of the reward sofa (or maybe they are hiding behind it?) for any spare change to balance their budgets on this one.

5. Pensions freedoms fraudsters
Staff over 55 with pension pots continue to be fleeced by fraudsters. One in seven have been targeted since April. Those criminals need mean tricks playing on them (and we don't mean eggs and flour).

6. EET, TEE, LTA, AA, etc, etc
Please make all the acronyms stop! Also, there are far too many changes to pensions regulations in the pipeline. Although Chancellor George Osbourne did manage to pull a treat out of his Halloween bag this week: any announcement of tax relief changes to pensions will be shunted into next spring. While last week Pensions minister Ros Altman put a stop to pot follows member, defined ambition and collective benefits. Three cheers! Take a sweetie.

7. You can't hide admin charges in employees' AMCs
But proposals to make more changes to pensions go on. Getting your staff to pick up the tab for your pension scheme’s admin could be for the chop. This week the government published it’s consultation, Better workplace pensions: banning member-borne commission in occupational pension schemes. So there goes that wheeze to balance your benefits budget.

8. Employees who sue
Employee-gone-bad steals and publishes Morrisons’ payroll data. Now the retailer faces a class action law suit from 2,000 of its staff. Horror trick of the highest order all round.

9. Shared parental leave
You need all those months off just to deal with the paperwork. But we do enjoy seeing more dads out with strollers on weekday mornings.

10. Master trusts
Will the master trust you chose be a treat … or a trick? They are flavour of the year in pensions circles, but there are far too many of them for them all to survive. Consolidation and demises will happen. Don't pick a pumpkin.

On that cheery note, I’m off to bar the doors, switch off the lights and generally pretend I’m not home when the local kids come round trick and treating (they seem to have started appearing in costumes days ago … have you noticed?)

Debi O'Donovan
Founder
Reward & Employee Benefits Association (REBA)
Twitter: @debiodonovan @REBA_global