Overpaid maternity leave

[Lola9]

Dear all,
I have a massive problem and I need support/ help and advise.
I went on mat leave the 2nd of Dec 2021 and
I had the baby one week after . I sent numerous emails to payroll talking about my maternity leave and other things.
In July 2022 I had a meeting with my manager to extend my maternity leave that payroll was copied into.
What is my surprise that at the end or my mat leave I got paid ( I was not supposed to) so basically sent an email to payroll requesting to review the payment. ( no answer from payroll)
Long story short payroll never recieved my documents as I was going on mat leave so they pay me my full salary during all this months.
I was not aware as I didn't know how much I was meant to get various reasons , I have never done this before, I removed my pension so I could have more cash, I did extra shifts during my mat leave to get more money and also this was a new possition)
Basically I recieved a letter with a debt of 25.000£ to be paid in one year, from next month! Basically they want me to work during one year without getting paid. I can't afford this, I have a 1yo child, mortgage and bills.
What can I do?
Is there any way I can escape from this ?
I understand was not my money, but I didn't know and I took like decisions based on what I was getting paid at the time.
Also I gor payslips every month and my money was taxed. Now tye company is requesting the total gross money therefore what happens with all the taxes I already paid ?
Im gonna loose my house, my assets and I am afraid of my baby.
Any ideas mamas?

@Lola9 Its not 100% clear what actually has happened.

If I can summarise my understanding

• You worked extra shifts between weeks 16 and 25 to increase your average pay when calculating SMP and OMP
• You went on Mat leave with Company A
• You have no idea what Company As OMP rules are.
• 6 months after starting mat leave you moved jobs to company B but remained on Mat leave with Company B.
• You did not work during your 12 months Mat leave
• Company A paid you your salary with no SMP for the whole 12 months even though you worked for Company B for the last six months albeit on Mat leave
• Company A is now requesting back the overpaid pay with no details.
• You realised you were being overpaid and put some of the money to one side to repay.

Is that right? if so

• Only company A can pay SMP, once you left them they needed to either pay the rest of your SMP possibly in a lump sum. Your OMP should have ceased when you left Company A.
• Company B should not have paid you anything as you were not working for them, you were not entitled to SMP form Company B nor OMP.
• Ask Company A for a full breakdown of what they have paid and what they should have paid up until your last day. This will be gross pay. It is correct they have calculated your gross overpayment.
• Once you have the figures and are sure they are right offer to pay the money you put on one side, that should reduce the overpayment. Then ask for a recalculation of YTD figures and a new overpayment figure. Then agree a repayment schedule.

Repayment
If your gross salary is £40k your monthly take home is c£2,500. If you repaid at £1000 gross per month your take home pay would be c£1,900 but you may get a tax rebate. I think that would be a reasonable proposal and be very clear it is £1000 gross not net.

Tax and NI
You will be due a rebate and your payroll manager should be able to give you an indication how this will affect the amount you repay. The more you can repay from the money you set aside the better.

It will be much better if you can repay as much as possible before 31 March 2023 as you will receive the tax rebate via payroll.

If I have misunderstood what happened then maybe you can provide bullet points clearly setting out who paid you.

@Lola9 just seen @USaYwHatNow response that you work for NHS. So the Company A Company B is potentially a red herring as essentially the NHS paid you SMP and OMP throughout.

In my experience (CS) we would avoid moving you between departments during Mat leave as it complicates payroll.

@WimbyAce I agree payroll often get the blame for both managers and staff thinking you are psychic and expect you to know what they are doing without telling you. Payroll are usually the ones dumped with sorting it out.

Exactly this, have to be frigging thick skinned!

@WimbyAce obviously you work for payroll, so I apologise for tarring them all with the same brush, but of the three issues I've had with payroll it has been their fault and they have had to call me and apologise. The month I wasn't paid they called me to apologise and when I asked what happened he dithered and then ummed and ahhhed something about my paperwork being sat on his desk but not realising what it was 🙄

I’m a HR Director. My team spend hours every week sorting out payroll errors. Payroll told someone last week that NMW is advisory and they didn’t know we paid maternity pay. They think there are 4 weeks in every month (pay is done on calendar months) and managed to pay 2 people last month that didn’t even work for us. They have 4 different ways to calculate a day’s pay and use them
randomly ensuring nobody’ s pay is ever correct. 🤯

@OnceAgainWithFeeling I am Senior HR professional with a specialism in pay policy. If there are payroll errors is this from the original data input into the HR system or the actual payroll I.e. config is incorrect?

I am shocked by some of your examples as I have always worked with payroll teams who are led by extremely knowledgable and capable payroll managers.If I had a payroll team not knowing about NMW and SMP I would insist on training sessions for them PDQ.

The 4 different methods of calculating pay is most likely because of case law/legal workarounds because modernising a pay methodology has contractual implications and is time consuming and resource intensive to change. Plus in my 30 years experience no one at Board level is ever interested in, nor prepared to understand, the importance of the pay methodology because it’s not sexy strategic blue sky thinking, it’s complex and deeply technical but can expose an organisation to huge risks.

As an HR Director what are you doing to resolve this? Employees complaining about payroll is par for the course, an HR Director has a responsibility to find out why there are issues and to help resolve then e.g. bringing in a qualified payroll manager, allocating more resource, training etc.

Unfortunately, payroll isn’t part of my remit. For some reason they’re part of finance and so getting them to listen to anything or getting them to systematically change anything has to be agreed by the Finance Director. They don’t see it as any sort of specialism and basically run it with agency administrators rather than folk with payroll experience. It’s beyond frustrating.

I have today insisted on one single calculation and told them what it needs to be. <sigh>

I agree with @Princessglittery I’m a payroll operations manager in an accountancy bureau, case law has amended the was we calculate day rates and annual leave 3 times in the last 5 years. I have to be so up to date with these things to make sure my staff are too - anyone cocks up and it’s on my head so yup training is done quick and in depth.
we have clients who pay all statutory, clients who pay enhanced and clients who pay a mix of both - attention to detail has to be on point

@OnceAgainWithFeeling you have my sympathy, I would never want Finance in charge of running Payroll.

Why are your team responsible for resolving errors? Can you not just pass them over, unless Finance gets the pain they won’t change.

@Lola9 sorry slightly derailed your thread.

How are you getting on resolving this?

Because 40k people think HR does everything. And finance argue that HR should set the rules. It’s utterly exhausting.

HR should set the rules but that includes operating the payroll system.

You must spend a lot of time hitting your head against a brick wall. You have my sympathy.

I certainly do. Thanks for the support.