The council can make payments to address a temporary addition to an employee’s pay due to acting up or taking on additional duties.
Managers who wish to pay an additional payments should:
- Seek advice and guidance from the relevant People Business Partner or People Consultant as appropriate.
- Complete the additional payments form (DOCX, 45KB).
- Forward the form to additionalpaymentrequest@essex.gov.uk for review and approval.
- Once approved, the form will be returned so the requesting manager can then submit via the Assyst portal.
Acting up allowance
The acting up allowance is payable when an employee agrees to carry out the duties of a higher-graded post for a period of at least four weeks, for any reason other than to cover annual leave. For example, maternity leave or long-term sick leave.
Acting up responsibilities will usually be for a maximum of 12 months. Where there is a need to cover a position for a longer period then consideration should be given to advertising the vacancy more widely.
Who can fill the post
Where there are only one or two employees with the knowledge and skills to act up to the higher-graded role it is relatively easy to identify the jobholders who could reasonably be asked to carry out the higher-graded role. If there are a large number of employees who could act up to the higher-graded role, there will be a need to advertise the temporary acting up arrangement.
Where an employee agrees to carry out the full duties and responsibilities of the higher-graded job, managers can temporarily appoint the employee to the higher-graded role on My Oracle as a secondment.
Employees who undertake part of the duties and responsibilities of the higher-graded role will receive a partial acting up payment. For example, if the employee is covering 50% of the higher-graded duties and responsibilities they would receive 50% of the difference between the rate for job (RFJ) of the higher-graded role and their substantive RFJ.
During the period of acting up the employee is entitled to the full contractual benefits appropriate to the higher-graded post.
Acting up payments:
- are made to employees who agree to carry out partial duties and responsibilities of a high-graded job
- may be shared between two or more employees on a pro-rata basis. Managers should seek advice from their PBP on the proportion and distribution of the acting up duties and responsibilities in this situation
- are a pensionable, contractual element of pay and are included in the calculations of benefits such as sick pay and annual leave pay
- are removed once the need for the acting up arrangements no longer exists. Managers are responsible for ensuring that employees receive sufficient notice of this
Additional duties allowance
Additional duties are not the same as acting up. Acting up requires a vacant post for the employee to act up into, whereas additional duties are ‘on top of’ the normal duties and responsibilities of the role.
Employees may be asked to undertake additional duties or responsibilities for a period of time that are in addition to the requirements stated in their role profile, for example when working on a project for example. Where these are significant a manager can recognise and reward this by applying an additional duties payment.
Additional duties:
- will usually continue for a period of 3 to 12 months and a maximum of up to 15% above the RFJ can be added. The manager may seek advice from the relevant People Business Partner regarding the percentage to be added, if appropriate
- require an end date before being approved and will not usually extend beyond 12 months
- will be paid to individual employees only
- are pensionable and as such are included in the calculation of benefits such as sick pay and annual leave pay
- could be paid as a one-off sum to recognise that a project has finished for example, or it could be a monthly amount to recognise an on-going requirement