giant umbrella

A contract of employment, with giant as your employer. Under this contract of employment, you may take on various different assignments through various agencies / hirers. The contract terms ensure we cover our responsibilities as your employer. They will therefore be different to the
terms under your contract for services if you were operating as a PSC.

No it does not.

Click on the joining link on our website and you can onboard within minutes – simple, convenient and easy!

We’ll need your personal details (e.g. name, DOB, email address, home address, NI number, bank details) and for you to carry out an electronic identity and right to work check.

As your prospective employer, we have a legal responsibility to ensure that you have the right to work in the UK. Under our anti-money laundering policy, we are required to also check your identity and address. You can carry this simple check out quickly, conveniently and securely via your online portal. 

Remember to have your passport to hand when completing the onboarding steps.

Once you have logged into your portal and provided your personal and assignment details, your contract documents will be made available to you to view and accept electronically online.

We will email them when you join, but we also recommend that you advise them that you are joining giant as some agencies require the information directly from yourself.

No, your employment starts from the first day of your assignment. Therefore you can fully join online today so that everything is set up and ready. Your employment will start when your assignment starts. 

Yes, please enter your details and rate on the calculator available on our website.

Our illustrations provide an estimated take home using a fixed set of assumptions as detailed. They are for illustrative purposes only to provide an estimated net take home and should not be thought of as guaranteed income.

We are unable to include student loan repayments in the illustration we provide; however if we are notified by HMRC to make deductions, the amount you repay depends on which plan you’re on. Each plan has a threshold for your weekly or monthly taxable income. You repay:
• 9% of the amount you earn over the threshold for Plan 1 and 2
• 6% of the amount you earn over the threshold for the Postgraduate Loan
• If you have a Plan 1 or 2 loan and a Postgraduate Loan, you’ll repay 15% of the amount you earn over the threshold.

You do not pay anything back if your income is under the threshold. The thresholds change on 6th April each year, click on the following link to find out the current thresholds: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

Yes we can, please contact our welcome team on 0330 024 0946. To understand in detail the impact it may have on your financial planning we recommend that you speak with a qualified independent financial advisor Humphries IFA by calling on 020 8390 9055 (http://www.humphriesifa.co.uk/)

If your agency sends us your timesheet information electronically (known as DX – Data Exchange), upon processing the file, we will pay you the next working day via faster payment. Faster payment means the funds will clear in your account on the same day and so you won’t need to wait the usual 2-3 working days for payment to clear.

If your agency does not operate Data Exchange with us, you must enter a timesheet online via your giant portal, this will invoice your agency and once we receive the cleared and allocated funds from them, we will pay the next working day via faster payments

We will pay you in line with the same frequency that your agency pays us – i.e. if they pay us weekly, we will pay you weekly; and if they pay us monthly, we will pay you monthly.

If your agency pays us weekly and you would prefer for us to pay you monthly, then we can arrange this for you.

No, as your employer we can only make payments into a personal UK-based bank account where you are a named account holder.

As an employee of giant’s, you are able to claim various types of business expenses such as:

• business mileage
• travel
• subsistence
• temporary accommodation
• tools and equipment
• software
• capital expenditure
• professional subscriptions
• cost of DBS/background checks
• eye tests
• safety wear
• currency exchange fee
• training, exams + associated travel/meals
• consumables (postage, stationary)
• business calls

Business mileage and capital expenditure are reimbursed via your payslip free from tax and national insurance deductions. Tax relief on the remaining expenses can be claimed by you at the end of the tax year via HMRC. You can claim expenses such as capital equipment (PC's, laptops, printers), training and professional subscriptions; however, home to work travel and its related subsistence is only allowable where you have no supervision, direction or control (SDC) by the hirer. All business expense claims must be submitted via the employee portal with supporting receipts uploaded.

Since April 2016, if the hirer has the right to supervise, direct or control you, then HMRC deem you to be treated similar to a permanent employee of the hirer. You are:

• supervised if someone is ensuring your work is being done correctly and to the right standard
• directed if someone ensures your work is performed in a certain way e.g. instructing how it should be done
• controlled if someone dictates what work you do and/or how you do it

As a result, if you are under supervision, direction or control, you are not eligible to claim tax relief on expenses such as home to work travel and subsistence.

Your agency will quote you the limited company rate, which can often be confusing because this is the amount payable to giant and not you. To get to your actual gross rate, there are a number of deductions that need to be made including employers national insurance (13.8%), apprenticeship levy (0.5%) and our weekly margin.
These deductions can vary depending on the number of hours or days worked and therefore your gross pay rate will vary. This can be confusing and from April 2020, as part of the Governments Good Work Plan, agencies will have to detail these deductions on a Key Information Document issued to you so you have a clearer idea of your actual gross pay rate.

All employers must pay employer’s national insurance and the apprenticeship levy – it is a statutory requirement.

The rate that the agency pays to giant must cover these employment costs and our margin. To get your actual gross pay rate, we deduct these costs first and the remaining balance is your gross pay, which is subject to PAYE tax and Employee’s National Insurance.

You receive an invoice reconciliation and a payslip. The invoice reconciliation starts with the payments made to giant (the limited company rate quoted by your agency) and then shows the statutory deductions such as employer's national insurance, apprenticeship levy, and our margin, before arriving at your gross taxable pay which is shown on your payslip with PAYE tax deductions.

You will have a statutory minimum entitlement of 28 days per year including bank and public holidays. If under the AWR regulations, we are advised by your agency of a higher entitlement, then this will be matched. 
You have the option to either have your holiday accrued and paid to you when you take time off; or paid out to you each time you are paid on a ‘rolled up pre-paid’ basis, which therefore means when you take holiday you will not receive additional payment. During your onboarding, you will have the choice of which holiday scheme you would like to be set up under.

You should aim to ensure that you take your full annual leave entitlement within the holiday year. Any unused holiday will not be carried forward to a new year. If you take more than your entitlement, then it will be unpaid.

We recognise that many of you are moving to umbrella employment from your own limited company where you had greater freedom for pension planning. We have therefore tried to be as flexible as we can to offer you a number of different pension planning options under our umbrella employment.

You have three options: auto enrolment via NEST, giant’s Standard Life salary sacrifice pension or an alternative pension provider where you have an ongoing scheme.

After 90 days of continuous employment with us, we will auto enrol you into a workplace pension with NEST. You will contribute 4% of pensionable earnings (the government adds another 1%) and giant will contribute a further 4% (from funds we receive from the agency). Once auto-enrolled, you can opt out of this pension (by law the opt out is processed by you directly with NEST). For queries on the NEST scheme, please call them directly on 0330 020 0090.

You can join this scheme from day 1 of your employment with us. You can contribute up to 100% of your gross taxable income subject to a maximum of £40,000 per year and all employer’s national insurance and tax relief is received at source via what is known as a salary sacrifice arrangement.

Very easily. You read the information on your portal then provide us with the level of contributions you would like to make, and we do the rest!

Yes, we can accommodate this. However, you will need to contact your pension provider and request approval for giant to pay them via a salary sacrifice arrangement. Some providers will not allow this because of the associated administrative costs. In these situations, your contribution can be made from your net pay, but this is not as tax efficient
as a salary sacrifice arrangement.

Yes, we have partnered with Independent Financial Advisors, Humphries IFA, who can advise you on more flexible pension planning via a Standard Life salary sacrifice scheme. You might want to consider this if you:

• have a reduced contribution allowance because your total income is in excess of £150,000 per year
• want to carry forward unused pension allowances from the last 3 tax years to increase your contributions this year
• would like to have a choice of fund selection
• require advice on reviewing any historic schemes or would like to consolidate pension pots
• would like retirement benefits advice, cashflow modelling and forecasting work

To find out more, please call them on 0208 390 9055 or email [email protected] to speak with one of their Independent Financial Advisors.

Under the workplace pension we offer through NEST, the maximum contribution via your payroll will be 4% of your qualifying earnings. However, if you are contributing to a private pension scheme via giant you can contribute up to 100% of your gross taxable income above national minimum wage subject to a maximum of £40,000 per year.

If you have more than one pension scheme, the allowance is across all of them and is not a ‘per scheme’ allowance. A tapered allowance exists for those earning over £150,000 which can reduce the maximum contribution to £10,000 per year.

You can also carry forward any unused contribution allowances from the previous 3 tax years, which might allow contributions over £100,000 in the current tax year. To find out more about tapered or carry forward contributions, please call Humphries IFA on 0208 390 9055 or email [email protected] to speak with one of their Independent Financial Advisors.

HMRC will tax you on the excess contributions.

Not under NEST but you can vary your pension contributions under the other schemes. Please note pension providers do not like contributions to vary, and some may not allow it, in order to minimise their administrative costs.

This is an important question.

Under NEST the employer contribution, 4%, saves employer’s national insurance and tax however your employee contribution, 4%, is paid from your net income and only receives basic rate, 20%, tax relief at source. The government add 1% to your contribution making your contribution 5%. On your employee contribution you get no relief from
employers’ national insurance and you will need to claim higher rate tax relief via your self-assessment.

In contrast under our Standard Life pension arrangement all national insurance and tax relief is received at source via what is known as a salary sacrifice arrangement. All contributions are made before calculating your taxable gross income and therefore the contributions save employer’s national insurance and tax at your highest marginal rate.
Please note if you are requesting your existing scheme to be processed via giant you will want to ask if it can be processed via a salary sacrifice arrangement or whether your contributions are from your net income. The latter is less tax efficient because you only receive basic rate tax relief immediately, you apply for higher rate tax relief via your self assessment
and you do not get any employers national insurance relief.

Not where you are auto-enrolled into NEST but for all other schemes our margin increases by £4.75 per week.

Yes, but this will be separate to and not involve the giant umbrella pension schemes.

We have negotiated a discount of 0.72% per year on all funds provided by standard life via our standard life salary sacrifice pension. For example if the normal charge for a fund is 1.00% per year then via the giant salary sacrifice scheme the charge is reduced to 0.28% per year.
Please note if you take independent financial advice via Humphreys IFA there is an additional cost for their advice. Over the life of a pension, this discount is very significant. 

No we don’t – they’re free! You can request either an employment or financial reference directly via your portal and you’ll have it in your inbox within a matter of minutes.

As your employer, we do not file your self-assessment, as that remains your individual responsibility. We have our accountancy arm, giant Accounts Limited, who can prepare and file your self-assessment for you at a discounted rate.

Under the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (AWR), agency workers are entitled to have the same basic terms and conditions of employment as if they had been employed directly by the hirer once they have completed a qualifying period of 12 calendar weeks with the same hirer, in the same role.

Yes, as an employee of giant umbrella, you will be in scope of these regulations if you meet the qualifying criteria.

If you have worked in the same role for 12 weeks, you will qualify for equal treatment in respect of pay and basic working conditions. You can accumulate these weeks even if you only work a few hours a week. We will ask your agency for comparator details in the lead up to 12 weeks which includes asking for comparator salary, annual leave entitlement, bonus entitlement and benefits. Once received, we will calculate the comparator’s gross pay and compare to your gross pay with giant to ensure you are paid equal to or more than the permanent comparator. If there are no comparable workers or employees, then there is no entitlement to equal treatment.

You have two notice periods – one for your assignment at the hirer, and another for your employment with giant. Your agency will confirm the notice period for the assignment and we will populate this on the assignment schedule you are offered online with us. To terminate your employment with us (which is separate to your assignment notice period) you can serve immediate notice.

Yes, ensuring that you have served the relevant notice period. Some agencies will only allow you to change umbrella companies either at the point of extension or new assignment and so you should check their policy on allowing changes.

Yes, we hold the following cover for all our umbrella employees:

• professional indemnity: £5million for any one claim
• employer’s liability: £10million for any one occurrence
• public liability: £5million for any one occurrence
• products liability: £5million for any one occurrence

We aim to respond to all queries within 24 hours and have a robust complaints procedure in line with our employee handbook.

As a founder member of the Freelancer & Contractor Services Association (FCSA), an intrusive desktop and field review is undertaken against the FCSA code of conduct by one of the independent panel of reviewers. Our review is currently undertaken by EY. As part of this review, the results are then submitted to HMRC.

• ISO27001 International Data Security Standard
• ISO14001 Environmental Management Standard
• ISO9001 International Quality Standard

No.

When you join online our margin is only £22 per week.

Yes! Fill out the ‘refer a friend’ application form on the employee portal and one of our Welcome Team advisors will then contact your friend. If your referred friend chooses to join us, we will give you £50 (subject to tax and NI) for each and every friend you refer to us who becomes a giant umbrella employee. 

We appreciate you are really busy, especially when you’ve been instructed by your hirer to find an umbrella company pretty quickly! Joining giant umbrella has never been easier. We’ve developed a joining process to be proud of!

With us, you can complete the full sign up process online meaning you don’t have to speak to anyone at all if you don’t want to! Oh and by the way, when you sign up online our margin is only £22 per week.

Our umbrella offering is designed to be simple, paperless and hassle free. We ensure that you receive your full employment rights, take care of all PAYE tax deductions and provide you with a mobile enabled portal so you can easily access your data. All you need to do is complete your timesheets and we will do the rest. You will also benefit from:

• our 30 years of experience
• mobile enabled, simple software
• same day faster payments
• payment text alerts
• holiday pay
• one employer
• business insurances
• workplace pension
• statutory payments
• own tech – designed for simplicity
• same day advances
• support team
• giant advantage

Honoured by the Benefits Excellence Awards, giant advantage is an extensive employee benefits programme that can save you £1000’s each year with things like:

• cheaper cinema tickets
• discounts at your favourite high street retailers
• leasing a brand new, low emission, fully insured car free from tax and NI deductions
• buy a bicycle on a 12 month purchase plan free from tax and NI deductions