Whether you are an employer, employee or doctor, now is a good time to get familiar with the layout of the new fit note, which replaces the traditional sick note from 6 April 2010. A new entry on the statement of fitness for work [subscription required] in the XpertHR policies and documents section brings together the Government's sample version, official guidance for employers and doctors, and an overview of the law relating to the new fit note.

Despite the public sector pay freezes announced yesterday (see the coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph and Financial Times, plus the reactions from the First Division Association and the British Medical Association, all on external websites) many public sector employees will still be getting a pay rise in 2010.

As well as announcing the date of the 2010 Budget, the Prime Minister also made some announcements on public sector pay this morning.

In his speech on the economy, he confirmed that there would be no pay rises for senior civil servants, the senior military, the judiciary, senior NHS managers, consultants, GPs or dentists from April 2010.

All these groups have their pay rates recommended by public sector review bodies, which published reports today setting out their proposals. Reports on pay in the prison service and armed forces have also been published.

You can find a statement confirming which proposals the government has accepted or rejected on the Number 10 website.

As the Prime Minister had already pre-announced that these groups were going to have their pay frozen (see our round-up of public sector pay on XpertHR - subscription required), it was quite brave of the senior salaries review body to recommend that senior NHS managers earning less than £80,000 should get a 2.25% pay rise, which the government rejected. 

The Prime Minister also confirmed that government ministers would not be seeing ministerial pay rise in 2010-11 nor would they be taking up the 1.5% pay increase for all MPs from April 2010 that was announced last week.

On 6 April 2010, the new statement of fitness for work, or "fit note" comes into effect. Doctors will be able to advise that an employee "may be fit for work taking account of the following advice" and suggest arrangements that could help the employee return to work. The fit note is intended to give employers and employees greater flexibility in managing sickness absence and result in fewer employees being signed off work when they could do some work with appropriate support.

The willingness of UK workers to accept severe pay restraint - in many cases involving pay freezes - has helped many employers minimise job cuts and weather the worst of the 2008/2009 recession. However, with tentative economic recovery now underway and inflation soaring, it remains to be seen if UK workers and trade unions will tolerate a second successive year of pay restraint.

XpertHR's salary survey unit will shortly be sending participation packs for the Computer Staff Salary Survey to organisations which have previously taken part in this long-running research.

Find out more about participating in the Computer Staff Salary Survey or call us on 020 8652 2159.

Pay freezes look as if they're here to stay in 2010. Around three-fifths (57%) of UK workers do not expect to receive a pay increase in 2010 (external website), according to a YouGov survey commissioned by uSwitch, the BBC reports.

The National Management Salary Survey is one of the largest pay surveys conducted by XpertHR through its Celre salary survey arm. The 2010 report is being launched today jointly with the Chartered Management Institute.

There is more about the headline findings in our Celre blog, and my colleague Michael Carty has also written about it. Data will also be found in the XpertHR Job Pricing tool in due course once further checking and number crunching has been carried out. This will be live very soon now.

As well as a collapse in the headline pay award back to the record low of zero, latest data from reward specialists at IRS suggest a change in the way the national minimum wage influences the headline pay settlement.

Reward has taken something of a beating during the recession, with pay freezes becoming the norm for many UK workers during 2009. But there could be a further, hidden casualty among our most valued workplace perks, with potentially serious implications for morale: the free office cuppa.

The prognosis for pay awards across the UK economy in 2010 and beyond is less than rosy (PDF format, 47K) (external website), according to Bank of England governor Mervyn King.

Supporting women who are due to go on maternity leave, and those who are returning from maternity leave, can help employers retain experienced and dedicated employees and ensure that they are working to their full potential. There can be a number of significant benefits to business, including saving on recruitment and training costs and ensuring productivity levels are at their peak. However, knowing what practical support to give pregnant women or new mothers can be difficult. That’s why at XpertHR we’ve commissioned a good practice guide on maternity from Liz Morris of Mayfield Associates.

Many public sector workers already face low pay increases or pay freezes in 2010. Now, in an interview with the Sunday Times, Chancellor Alistair Darling has indicated that public sector pay will be subject to "restructuring" (external website), which could result in pay cuts for some jobs.

Pay awards staged a slight recovery in the closing months of 2009 (subscription required), with the headline award standing at 1.2% over the three months to 31 December 2009, according to latest data from reward specialists at IRS. But the pay outlook is uncertain: pay awards could either stage a further weak recovery in 2010, or slump back toward their recent all-time low of zero.

"[W]hile the government is rightly devoting taxpayers' money to helping Britain's one million jobless young people, it would be absurd at the same time to raise the youth minimum wage," according to CIPD chief economic advisor John Philpott. His comments coincide with the publication of a joint letter to Peter Mandelson - penned by the CIPD in partnership with the BCC (external website) - in which they call for a freeze on "further statutory increases in the cost of employing staff during what looks like being a 'jobs-light' recovery".

Retail prices index (RPI) inflation is long established as a key factor influencing private sector pay awards. But with pay awards subdued at present, and inflation set to prove volatile over the coming months, could 2010 prove to be the year in which RPI and pay awards come uncoupled?

Do you need to know about employment law in France? The latest European employment law guide added to XpertHR looks at key elements of employment law in Frances as it applies to: recruitment and selection; pay and benefits; employee rights; contracts of employment; training and development; equal opportunities; industrial relations; health and safety; and termination of employment.

XpertHR regularly publishes information on industrial relations law and practice across Europe - providing expert analysis of developments at European level and in individual European countries. In addition, other guides to national employment law in European countries include: the Netherlands; Italy; Germany; Greece; Poland; and Ireland. For ease of reference, we’ve rounded our European information up on one European employment law and practice page.

Remember that we want to provide information on the countries that are relevant to you in your HR role - so let us know which countries you’d like to see guidance on in the future.

Snow chaos across the UK means many employees can't get to work, through no fault of their own, because travel is not possible and/or schools are closed. Many believe they are entitled to be paid as usual in these circumstances - and are unhappy when they find otherwise.

A blog post of mine on snow, pay and employment rights from last February has seen a flurry of comments in the past few days, so I thought it would be worth returning to the issue today.

A round up of links to recent employment tribunal rulings, including the reinstatement of a Territorial army soldier who was made redundant after he returned from Afghanistan, a successful claim by a park ranger who was dismissed for making a joke about the colour of a black colleague's legs, and an award to a woman whose husband did the same job for the same employer but was paid more than her.

The national minimum wage rates paid to workers aged under 21 should be frozen at their current level (PDF format, 1.5MB) (external website) when the 2010/2011 national minimum wage uprating comes into effect on 1 October 2010, according to the CIPD. The CIPD argues that freezing the statutory pay floor for younger workers would help "ensure welcome government efforts to combat soaring youth unemployment are not fatally undermined just as the economy is beginning to recover".

Six months ago, I noted that pay was taking the brunt of the current recession: given the scale of the economic downturn, the rise in unemployment was surprisingly low, with pay awards absorbing a lot of the shock. Now, as 2010 gets into full swing, an increasing number of commentators argue that pay will continue to take the strain this year.

Want to receive the answer to a frequently asked HR question every day? If you’re on Twitter, you can do so by following HRdailyquestion. The questions come from the popular XpertHR FAQs section, which contains over 1,000 frequently asked HR questions - and more importantly the answers.

With snow across much of country once again, your organisation may be affected, with employees perhaps unable to get to work because of transport problems. Take into account the need to be flexible and make sure line managers use their common sense when dealing with the issues that arise. Guidance and a model policy on severe weather conditions and their impact on the workplace are available on XpertHR:

• Severe weather and disruptions to public transport policy
• Dealing with employment issues caused by severe weather or disruptions to public transport - a guide [subscription required for both]

The Department for Work and Pensions has published some of the key employment-related statutory rates for April 2010, including statutory maternity pay (SMP), statutory adoption pay (SAP), statutory paternity pay (SPP) and statutory sick pay (SSP).

With the busiest months of the pay setting calendar now upon us, employers can turn to some bang up-to-date salary data from CELRE, published exclusively on XpertHR Job Pricing, to inform their decisions.

Annual reports published in the final few weeks of 2009 as part of CELRE's core business survey cover staff working in HR and personnel, finance and accounts, and sales and marketing roles.

There is also fresh data for engineers and technicians, and for the distribution and media industries.

Around 50 new model policies and documents have been added to XpertHR in 2009. But what have been the most popular? The XpertHR employment intelligence blog provides a round-up.

Here's a useful list of reactions to the Pre-Budget Report from unions and employers on ePolitix, plus a "wordle" from the guardian which heavily features the word "tax".

The TUC's Nigel Stanley has done a useful summary of the pensions proposals in the PBR, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has just released its initial reactions, which are always worth reading.

 The reactions are coming in to the Chancellor's widely trailed proposal for a one-off tax on bonuses in the banking sector. Unsurprisingly the CBI warns that the "threat of an exodus of talent is real" while the TUC describes Darling's proposal as "at the modest end of what he could have done". Bankers have "no divine right to giant bonuses every year," says TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber.

But how will the tax actually work and are there any loopholes?

As usual, 2009 was a busy year in the employment tribunals, courts and in the European Court of Justice. But what employment law cases can we look forward to in the next 12 months? Here are 10 significant employment decisions expected in 2010.

After spending much of 2009 in negative territory, retail prices index (RPI) inflation has risen sharply, climbing out of the red and back into the black to see out the calendar year.

An obscure and unnnoticed report published by the UK's National Statistics Authority yesterday reveals that the existing national statistic for earnings growth - the long-established Average Earnings Index - is to be replaced with a series called Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) as the official monthly measure of wages and salaries.

While this may sound like a story that is mainly of interest to pay or statistics anoraks, it shouldn't be seen as such.

The earnings figures provide a critical indicator of supply and demand in the labour market - big pieces of the jigsaw of information on which decisions by the Bank of England and HM Treasury on the management of the UK economy are based.

The 2009/2010 national minimum wage increase - which saw the adult rate rise by 1.2% to £5.80 per hour when it came into effect on 1 October 2009 - was the lowest since a statutory minimum wage was introduced in April 1999. But now that the key economic indicators for October 2009 are in, how does the 2009/2010 national minimum wage increase stack up against rises in inflation and in whole economy pay awards? It all depends on what measure you use.

Pay awards have risen over the past quarter, with some help from the 1.2% increase to the national minimum wage that took effect on 1 October 2009, according to the latest analysis from IRS appearing on XpertHR today [subscription required].

Basic pay settlements were worth a median 1.2% in the three months to the end of October 2009, up from the pay freeze recorded for the past three rolling quarters.

We don't usually see such a significant boost from the minimum wage in our headline pay statistics, but as so many employers have been freezing pay this year, a 1.2% increase to minimum rates appears to have had a more significant effect on pay patterns than the higher minimum wage increases seen in previous years.

A round up of links to recent employment tribunal rulings, including a £190,000 payout to four redundant managers, a successful tribunal defence by Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty's restaurant group, and an unfair dismissal claim involving a missing barrel of beer.

Almost one in every 100 UK jobs pays less than the national minimum wage (PDF format, 97K) (external website), according to preliminary findings on low pay from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2009, published today.

Progress towards closing the gender pay gap resumed in the year to April 2009 (PDF format, 147.8K) (external website), according to headline findings from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2009, published today.

The current recession has resulted in a sea-change in UK reward, with cash no longer representing the central part of the reward offering for many employers, according to research from consultants Mercer.

Pay freezes dominated the UK reward landscape in 2009 (external website), but look set to exert very little influence in 2010, according to research from consultants Mercer.

"The UK jobs market looks healthier today than at any time in the last two years," according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation's latest monthly Report on Jobs, out today. The key stats can be found on XpertHR [subscription required].

"Based on the latest findings, we anticipate that unemployment will not reach three million in 2010 as some predicted," says REC's chief executive Kevin Green.

There is no question that public sector pay rises have outperformed the public sector in the 2008/2009 bargaining round. Latest analysis of whole economy pay trends from reward specialists at IRS (subscription required) reveals that the median public sector pay award stands at 2.3% over the 12 months to 31 August 2009, while the private sector median is 1.5%. But this stark sectoral pay divide could reverse over the coming year.

While it remains possible that the UK will exit the current prolonged recession in the near future, economic recovery is by no means guaranteed. This makes pay-setting decisions for the 2009/2010 pay bargaining round all the more problematic. Employers are therefore well advised to ensure that they understand what impact their reward decisions are going to have on their abilities to recruit, retain and motivate employees. The XpertHR Group offers a wealth of resources to help pay-setters make the right decisions in these circumstances.

Today XpertHR publishes a summary of what has happened to pay awards over the past year, plus a forecast of what will happen in 2010 [subscription required].

Flick through these slides for some of the key findings.

It used to be possible to use the phases "pay rise" and "pay settlement" interchangably, but not any more. This year has been the year of the pay freeze, with one third of all the basic pay awards monitored by IRS over the year to August 2009 giving no pay rise at all.

The October 2009 national minimum wage uprating marked the lowest increase to the statutory pay floor yet seen. The focus is now on what can be expected from the 2010/2011 national minimum wage increase, which will come into effect from 1 October 2010. Much hinges on who wins the 2010 general election.

This year has already seen the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the national minimum wage, which was introduced just over a decade ago, in April 1999. But our colleagues at CELRE - XpertHR's specialist salary surveys unit - note that today (Tuesday 20 October 2009) actually marks the 100th anniversary of a UK minimum wage.

With the 2009 Conservative Party conference taking place in Manchester this week, and a general election looming, XpertHR looks at the employment law changes that an incoming Conservative Government might make.

The national minimum wage will rise each year between 2010 and 2014 (external website) if Labour wins the 2010 general election, according to Gordon Brown in his speech to the Labour party conference in Brighton yesterday (Tuesday 29 September 2009).

Following the Government’s recent confirmation that it intends to push ahead with proposals to allow mothers to transfer the second six months of their maternity leave to fathers, a consultation has been launched including draft Regulations that set out how the proposals will be administered.

The words of Sherlock Holmes regarding "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" (external website) have once again been alluded to with reference to pay awards. Describing the failure of summer 2008 warnings of a wage-price spiral (in which higher inflation, coupled with higher inflation expectations, would feed through into higher wage demands), the Guardian's Ashley Seager states that wage inflation "was the dog that didn't bark" (external website).

Pay awards remain depressed, languishing at 1% over the three months to 31 August 2009, according to latest data from IRS. But the worst may be yet to come, with both private sector and public sector pay awards likely to come under significant downward pressure in 2010.

Pay awards will play a key role in economic recovery (or otherwise) over the coming year. There is a risk that inflation could accelerate rapidly once 2010 arrives, with the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee warning that inflation could rise "sharply" (PDF format, 91.7K) in the immediate future. This could be worrisome for private sector employers involved in pay setting, particularly for those currently engaged in negotiating pay settlements for January 2010.

 Pay awards remain remarkably weak, the latest analysis from IRS reveals [subscription required]. The median, basic pay settlement for the whole economy was unchanged at 1% in the three months to the end of August 2009. The median basic award for the previous rolling quarter has been revised down to a pay freeze. This is the first time that the headline measure has been a pay freeze in IRS's history of collecting pay settlements.

The 2009/2010 national minimum wage increase, which came into effect last week, is significantly lower than those seen in recent years. Yet when measured against the latest trends in pay awards, it could almost be argued to represent a competitive increase.

As autumn 2009 gets underway, the economic situation is looking decidedly mixed. The UK could already have exited the 2008/2009 recession, but economic recovery remains precarious with a relapse back into recession possible, according to the October 2009 economic commentary from CELRE - XpertHR's salary surveys unit.

The Trades Union Congress has backed calls by Equity to pay talent show contestants, reports The Stage (external website).

The 2008/2009 recession could already be over, yet economic recovery looks set to be protracted. And given the current circumstances, we will need to see a recovery in pay awards before unemployment begins to fall (external website), according to Sunday Times economics editor David Smith.

A long-term public sector pay freeze is on the cards (external website) should the Liberal Democrats win the 2010 general election, according to an interview with the party's leader Nick Clegg in the Guardian on Saturday (19 September 2009).

The UK faces the "tightest squeeze" on public spending since the 1970s (PDF format, 382.7K), according to research published on the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) website. The impact on public sector pay awards for 2010 and beyond could be severe.

The latest national minimum wage (subscription required) increase comes into effect from today (Thursday 1 October 2009), taking the adult rate from £5.73 to £5.80 per hour for 2009/2010, an increase of 1.2%.

I'm copying my colleague Martin Couzins's HR links idea with some pay and reward links for this week:

IRS pay prospects survey

This week is the last chance for reward professionals to complete our survey of private sector pay and gain access to a comprehensive report on the outlook for pay in 2010. 

Local government unions agree to pay deal

The pay award for around 1.4 million local government employees [subscription required] has been settled.

CIPD executive pay guidelines published

A set of principles from the CIPD to help HR directors and remuneration committees develop executive pay policies

The European Industrial Relations Observatory's review of pay across the EU in 2008

Download the full report on pay rises across the EU in 2008.

Latest LRD data on pay awards

Shows a median of 2% (June to August 2009) for negotiated pay awards reported to LRD by trade unions.

The report on the finance sector published yesterday by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (PDF format, 1.85Mb, on the EHRC website) is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the gender pay gap.

Unison, the public sector union, is looking at cutting back its final salary pension scheme for its own staff, according to the Times website.

Government plans for extensive cuts to public sector spending - likely to include severe pay restraint for 2010 - will be set out in Chancellor Alistair Darling's Pre-Budget Report 2009, which is expected to be delivered during the autumn.

Latest news from down under indicates that Australian workers on the whole are extremely optimistic regarding their pay prospects for the coming year, but HR professionals are least likely to share this sunny outlook on reward.

The NHS should cut 137,00 clinical and administrative posts (external website) - equivalent to 10% of its workforce - in order to achieve a planned £20 billion-worth of cost savings by 2014. This is according to a confidential report to the Department of Health commissioned from consultants McKinsey and Company.

Although the implementation date for the 2009/2010 national minimum wage increase is still a month away (coming into effect on Tuesday 1 October 2009), attention is already turning to what we can expect from the 2010/2011 increase, which will be implemented on 1 October 2010.

Capping City bonuses misses the point - instead the government may need to attack the source of the problem and tax the millions of City transactions that bring in the money that funds the bonuses, according to Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) Adair Turner.

The man tagged as "Red Adair" when he headed the CBI told Prospect magazine (as reported in the Guardian, Times and other papers), that: "If you want to stop excessive pay in a swollen financial sector you have to reduce the size of that sector or apply special taxes to its pre-remuneration profit". He described many of the City's activities as "socially useless".

Wednesday, apparently. According to a survey reported in the Telegraph, an employee who asks for a pay rise on a Wednesday is more likely to extract a positive response. Employers surveyed confided that on Mondays they are too frantic preparing for the week ahead, and by Thursday they are already dreaming of the weekend... Read more on the Telegraph website.

 This recession has proved record-breaking in many ways (the lowest ever interest rates, the lowest headline inflation and the biggest annual drop in GDP growth since records began...) and pay deals are no exception.

While this time last year many employers were setting basic pay awards at 3.5%, the going rate has been 1% for each rolling quarter since April 2009 - the lowest recorded by IRS since we began collecting pay information in 1971. This chart shows the extent to which pay deals have plunged since the start of 2009.

In such exceptional times, how are employers expected to prepare for pay reviews due over the coming year? By taking part in our pay prospects survey, of course.

Employee pay awards are running at just 1%, according to provisional analysis from IRS out today (subscription required).

The median basic pay award was 1% over the three months to the end of July 2009. This is a quiet period for pay deals, however. More significantly, our figures for the busy April pay bargaining round have also been revised downwards as more awards are settled, showing that the median basic pay deal has been 1% for each rolling quarter since the three months to April.

A consultation has been launched by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on proposals to help tackle the pay gap between men and women, by the voluntary reporting of gender pay information by private and voluntary sector employers.

A pay freeze is on the cards for some 1.6 million local government workers (external website) if the Conservative party wins the next general election, according to a report in The Times.

Any sensible employer should realise the importance of making maternity leave run as smoothly as possible, so that valued members of staff are more likely to return to work after their leave. One important tool is the pre-maternity leave interview.