The old “Blue Forms” process for paying casual workers is coming to an end. From 1^st April 2020 onwards we will be operating a new electronic process for registering and commissioning casual work. To enable work to start on the 1^st April 2020 we will open the process up for registration from the 2^nd March 2020.

Whilst under the older process claims were made retrospectively it will now be necessary to register as a casual worker and to only start when a pre-approved piece of work is allocated. A simplified diagram shows the steps involved in the new process below. This process introduces the key roles of Casual Worker, Reviewer of Casual Work Registrations, Commissioner of Work and Reviewer of Work Requests. Specific information relevant to each role is displayed under each tab.

Claims for work undertaken before the 1^st April 2020 can still be made up to the 1^st July 2020 but payment will be conditional on the casual worker having registered with this new process.

Here is a link to a Panopto video of one of our training sessions

Casual Worker Registration

Casual Work Process

Registering for Casual Work

You will not be able to undertake work for the University on a casual basis without registering and proving your eligibility to work within the UK. Acceptable evidence to support this is described in the following document. If you are a registered student or an existing employee of the University we may be able to determine your eligibility from information we already have on file for you. The registration process is adaptive and will only ask for the information that is absolutely necessary. You will be asked to upload photographs or scanned copies of your eligibility documents; these need to be of good quality, in colour and be legible.

Once you have filled in the registration form at https://workforce.bangor.ac.uk/registration your registration will be sent to a reviewer whom you will need to make an appointment to see to verify the authenticity of your eligibility documents. To do this you will need to present to them your original documentation (not copies). This person and their contact details will be made known to you by e-mail on completion of the registration form.

Once you have been successfully registered you will be sent details of how to access your Bangor University IT(e-mail) account, if you do not already have one. You will need to use this to make payment claims.

If you see a message from Microsoft as shown below during the process you will need to click Accept on the request to use your profile information.

Receiving Casual Work

Registering for casual work does not guarantee that work will be given to you only that you meet the criteria for eligibility and that all the initial checks are complete. Members of staff will be able to commission work from you and will allocate it to you through this process. When you are allocated work an e-mail will be sent to your University and Home e-mail accounts detailing the period and nature of the work together with the rates of pay offered and the maximum amount of hours allotted for the work.

Unless you have received an e-mail originating from this system allocating work to you do not proceed to undertake the work. It is imperative you do not start on work given to you verbally following the 1^st April 2020.

If you hold a Tier 4 visa which entitles you to work please ensure that any work you undertake does not exceed your visa restrictions (normally 20 hours per week term time, 40 out of term but may be less if you are on a short-term visa or not on a degree level course). Please remember that the restrictions are for the total of all hours worked in the UK not just any role at the University.

Making a Claim for Payment

Once you have completed the work you should register your claim at https://workforce.bangor.ac.uk/claim Here you will see all the outstanding work allocated to you and will be able to record the actual number of hours worked, subject to the maximum allowed in the allocation. Once you have submitted the claim it will be sent for approval to the individual named on the work allocation. Once the approval has been made the payment will be generated. Depending on when the approval is made the payment will either be at the end of the current month or the end of the following month. E-mail communication will be generated and sent to you to keep you advised of the progress.

Claims for expenses payments are not handled by this system and will (if relevant) be made under the University’s existing procedures for travel and subsistence.

FAQs for Casual workers

• What happens with pre agreed work if the worker doesn’t complete the claim form or do the work? Reminders will be sent to workers who haven’t claimed. Claims not made within 3 months would be forfeited. 
• How long are registration documents valid for?
  Registrations will be valid until the earlier of the end of the VISA, Passport or Student Registration / Employment contract. Workers who are home/EU nationals will not be constrained to an end date and have currently lifelong validity. (Consequences of Brexit will affect EU Nationals in due course)
• I haven't been paid, who should I go and speak to?
  E-mails will be generated by the system at each stage of the payment journey and will keep the worker fully informed. The only requirement following the claim is that confirmation is provided by the person commissioning the work. This person will be named on the work allocation and will be known to the worker through the e-mails generated. This is the person who will be able to release the claim for payment. Once this has occurred the system will keep the worker informed of when the payment will actually be made.
• What do I do if I have incurred any expenses in undertaking the hours allocated?
  You have to complete a standard Bangor University Travel and Subsistence Claim Form https://www.bangor.ac.uk/finance/stationery/index.php.en , get it authorised and send it to our Finance Team with all the receipts. You must have agreed the payment of expenses prior to putting in the claim else it may be rejected.
  
  Send to: Finance Office (Accounts Payable), Cae Derwen, College Road, BANGOR. LL57 2DG
• What do I do if I’ve submitted a timesheet with the wrong hours?
  Inform the organiser of the piece of work as soon as possible.
• How will people without valid National Insurance numbers be paid?
  It is mandatory that you have a NI Number. You may be able to acquire one from HMRC https://www.gov.uk/apply-national-insurance-number but this could take 2-3 weeks approx. to obtain. Speak to the person intending to offer you work if this is likely to be a problem.
• How do I register if I only have a non-UK bank account?
  Currently this option is not available.
• What should I do with any currently filled in blueforms?
  Current forms can be processed as normal up until the March payroll cut-off. Thereafter they would need to be processed using the new system and entered as a retrospective work allocation.

Those members of staff nominated as reviewers of registrations will likely have already been responsible for checking and authorising the older Blue Forms. The requirements in this electronic process are essentially the same. These are that the casual worker is eligible to work in the UK and have the relevant documentation as shown here. The casual worker will upload images of their eligibility evidence to the site. They will be asked to make an appointment to see you where they will bring the original documents for you to check that the uploaded images are accurate and sufficient proof of eligibility. At the same time a workflow task will be generated and sent to you via email, which allows you to approve or reject the registration, this will include a link to the documentary evidence they submitted. You should only approve the registration once you have had sight of the original documents.

This is a one time only process and will be valid until the end date of the validity of the documents or until 13 months after their last casual work engagement.

FAQs for Reviewers of Registration

• Who checks the documents if the worker works in multiple parts of the university?
  When the workers registers they are asked which department they are most likely to work in. This is the department that will perform the document check. It is done once and the result is valid across the entire University for all casual work engagements.
• Will a person be able to undertake work if they haven’t brought in originals of their registration documents for verification?
  No. The originals of the documents must be seen beforehand before a person is eligible to undertake any casual work. This is a legal requirement.
• How do we handle document check when the casual worker is only in Bangor on the day they are required to work?
  Law demands that eligibility to work is carried out prior to work being commenced. Those commissioning work should ensure that high quality scans of the eligibility documents have been submitted prior to travel. The electronic system will almost instantly process the information thus provided that original documents are consistent with the submitted images there should be minimal delay (minutes not days) in issuing the approval once they are here.
• What should I check for on the document? Check the picture agrees to the applicant and ensure the validity dates on the document are correct and are currently valid. If the document is due to expire soon, point this out to the worker when they contact you.
  
• If a person contacts me to undertake an ID check who I have no knowledge of, what should I do? There is nothing to stop you doing this in fact we encourage you to do so. They make have selected the wrong department on their application but they will be working on behalf of the University so there is nothing to stop you validating. They may work for your department somewhere down the line.
  
• We are currently working from home and unable to see applicants face to face, how should we proceed?
  Whilst face to face contact is prohibited, we’d ask you to undertake a video call via Teams/Zoom/Skype to do the verification. You can still check the person is the person on the ID documents and they can hold up the original of the ID document to the screen for verifying against the copy you receive.

If you commission work from casual workers you need to do so through Unit4 Business World solution. Further information will be available soon. No casual work can be undertaken by workers without it first having been approved within the system. Work can be commissioned by anyone within the University with access to U4BW (formerly Agresso) but won’t be handed down to a worker without first being approved by one of the designated individuals within the College/Directorate. They may impose local policies on who ultimately is allowed to commission work within their College/Directorate and may reject all requests not conforming to those rules. Only those casual workers who have registered through this system will be available to be offered work within the system.

When you commission work you will need to set the maximum number of hours allotted for the work and the rate of pay applicable to it. These are displayed on the webform when you complete the request. Once submitted this is then sent to be approved electronically.

Once the work has been allocated to the worker following approval the worker may then make a claim for it. As the person commissioning the work it will be up to you to check the work was done. Their claim will be sent to you electronically as a Payroll workflow task in U4BW for you to approve - you will also recieve an email notifification. You must do this in a timely fashion as otherwise you will be holding up payment to the individual.

A Guide to Casual worker request forms

FAQs for Commissioning work

As approvers of casual work you are responsible within your College / School / Directorate / Department ensuring that sufficient funding is available to cover the proposed work and that the engagement meets the University’s policies and legal requirements. Eligibility to work will already have been established as part of the registration process. If in doubt the work request should be rejected. Remember that in this process no work will be started until it has been approved therefore it is essential that decisions are made as quickly as possible.

A Guide to Casual worker request forms

FAQs for Approvers of Casual Work

• What if I want to be able to use an hourly rate not displayed in the dropdown box?
  Use the ‘Other Rates under the Rate dropdown box when adding an item and define the rate in the Non-Standard Rates area of the form.

Clause:

[E]  Note: these rates include an allowance for holiday pay at 12.07%.