Hi students.
Hope you're well.
My name is Jade Joddle.
And in today's business English lesson,
I'm going to teach you about the vocabulary of pay in the UK.
This is a great lesson for you to watch if you work in the UK
or perhaps are considering it sometime in the future
and you want to be able to compare pay in the UK
to pay in your home country.
We'll start with the number on the board.
Take a guess what this number represents.
This is in fact, the average annual salary
of a worker in the UK according to the Office
of National Statistics.
And that figure was calculated in September 2021.
But bear in mind that this figure
is before tax deductions.
So the amount that you get in your pocket,
your take-home pay, is significantly less
than that amount.
Now we'll talk about a couple of ways
of saying how much you earn you may have heard these and not
been exactly sure what they mean.
Someone who earns a six-figure salary
earns 100,000 pounds, dollars, euros,
whatever all the way up to just under a million.
When we're talking about six figures,
we're counting the digits.
So when we write 100,000, we will say six figures.
So someone who earns six figures isn't revealing
the exact amount they get paid.
They're just letting you know that they earn a lot of money.
Next we have seven figures.
This is definitely an American English way of saying it.
Someone that earns seven figures earns even more.
They earn a million all the way up to just under 10 million.
I don't know about you, but I don't know many people
who earn this amount of money.
So I can't say it comes up in conversation much.
Although I've heard it used extensively in online marketing
and when people are talking about internet business
and that sort of thing.
At the other end of the scale, something
that's much more common is the minimum wage.
This is how people refer to it in
normal everyday conversation, which
is the lowest pay per hour that someone can get doing a job.
And that's the legally lowest pay they can get.
So someone will say it's a minimum wage job.
That means they pay you the lowest
they can possibly pay you.
But the government had to come along and make
it a lot more complicated.
So we now have these extra words for talking about the pay
that somebody gets that's the legally lowest pay.
First, we have the National Minimum Wage.
This refers to how much somebody who is aged 23 or under get.
But it's even more complicated because it's not just
one hourly rate--
there are many-- it depends on your age.
And the lowest amount that anyone gets paid in the UK
is the amount that an apprentice gets.
That is somebody who is learning to do a skilled trade.
For example, an apprentice electrician.
They are legally allowed to be paid the lowest
wage per hour of anyone.
Then we have the National living wage.
This is changed every year.
And the new national living wage that will be coming in April
the 1st 2022 will be 9.50 pounds per hour.
And this will be the legally lowest wage per hour
that someone 23 or older can be paid.
Next we have London weighting.
I'm sure you're aware that living in London
is very expensive.
This is because of the housing costs.
Due to the extra expenses, employers
have to make their jobs in London
more attractive to people.
So one of the ways to do that is by paying people more.
London weighting is an extra allowance
that some people get in some jobs so that living in London
is more affordable for them.
Typically, this is going to apply to people
who work in the public sector.
Government jobs.
This could be teachers, this could be
people who work for the NHS--
the health service, it could be policemen.
All of these people may get London waiting in their jobs.
It's not a legal requirement to pay
people extra to work in London.
And due to this, most people who work in the private sector,
they don't get any extra money for living in London.
Now let's talk about a different set of terms
here, which are more modern and they
are to do with movements towards paying people fairly
and to try and prevent discrimination in pay.
We'll begin with salary band.
Sometimes when you see a job advertised these days,
it doesn't tell you the exact amount you will get paid.
It's showing instead a salary band.
It shows the lowest possible amount and the highest
possible amount that someone can get paid doing that job.
If you apply for that job, the amount that you get
will depend on your experience.
It's part of what's called pay transparency.
When something is transparent, we
can see through it, like I can see through a pane of glass
in the window.
So pay transparency is the effort
to make how much a person gets paid more transparent.
Because if you think about it--
I'm not sure what it's like in your country.
But traditionally here, salary was a very private thing.
You didn't discuss it with people.
And it would be considered rude to ask someone
how much they earn.
However, with that secrecy comes the opportunity for unfairness.
And this is why pay transparency is pushing
things in the other direction.
Because when you know how much your colleague is being paid
to do the same or very, very similar job,
then it's not possible to pay you unfairly.
And salary banding is a partial pay transparency measure.
It just ensures that there's a general range
that people can be paid.
And it doesn't tell you.
You don't know exactly how much your colleague earns,
but you know that you're in the same band.
So it can't be a huge amount more than you.
Next we have the gender pay gap.
According to the government, this
is an equality measure for keeping an eye on or tracking
the different overall pay that men get and women
get in all jobs everywhere.
It's not what people often misunderstand it as,
which they think is a man and a woman doing the same job,
but the man gets paid more and the woman gets paid less.
It's not that because that's already illegal in the UK.
Next we have remuneration package.
What do you get from doing your job--
your remuneration-- isn't just about money.
There may also be other benefits from taking that job.
It could be your mobile phone, could be a company car,
it could be a staff discount if you work in an a shop,
if you work in a very cool place,
it might be something like having a gym.
All of these extras on top of your salary
are what's make up the remuneration package.
The extra little sweet things that
will attract you to work somewhere.
Then we have annual leave.
This is holiday pay.
This is a legal requirement that workers get.
And every year, they are legally allowed
28 days paid holiday per year.
And in weeks, that works out to 5.6 weeks.
If you're a self-employed person,
there's no such thing as this.
You don't know what this is.
Next we have bank holiday.
This refers to the days when traditional businesses
like banks and offices are closed.
And there's eight days per year usually on a Monday.
So when you have a bank holiday, quite often
you get Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
Three days together when most businesses are closed.
This brings us back to annual leave
because employers do not have to give you
your 28 days plus the 8 days bank holiday.
It depends on the employer.
But they can count bank holidays as part of your entitlement
to annual leave.
And this brings us to a last term
here, which is time and a half.
It used to be that when you have a bank holiday, because most
people aren't going to want to work then,
they might want to be with their families
or because there might be stuff happening,
there might be fun things happening,
they want to be off work and enjoying themselves
at the time of the bank holiday.
So to make it more attractive to workers--
mainly in the past, but it does still happen--
people were paid time and a half,
which means they get their usual hourly pay, but on top of that
they get an extra half so they earn a lot more money if they
work on those undesirable days when everybody else is relaxing
or having fun.
So time and a half would apply to bank holidays or sometimes
even Sundays.
But increasingly, the way work is changing,
there is less of this.
Much too generous for workers.
And it's probably related to the fact
that the National living wage has increased so much.
So employers don't want to pay extra
if they can get away with it.
So thank you for watching today's lesson.
Hope you found it interesting.
I have a course on Business English vocabulary.
If you enjoyed this lesson, definitely check it out.
And other than that, welcome back again soon
for future videos on my channel.
I'll see you then.
Bye