We have recently decided to stop providing pay slips in paper format to and to instead use email to distribute pay slips to employees. 90% of the workforce has agreed to this and we have had no issues. However, a small number of employees are either refusing to give us an email address or telling us that they do not have an email address or access to a PC. How do I handle it?


Sharon McArdle writes:


An employee has the right to receive a written itemised pay statement from his employer (Article 40, Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996). This requirement can be fulfilled by sending the pay statement electronically. HMRC guidance in relation to PAYE confirms that pay statements “can be in either paper or electronic format”.

The key point of the relevant provision is that the employer must give the employee the statement. If the employee does not have an email address or provide an email address the employer cannot give the employee the relevant statement by email. A failure to provide a written itemised pay statement can give rise to an employment tribunal claim, and if a tribunal finds that an employee has not received a pay statement they must make a declaration to that effect (Article 43, Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996).

Further, if the tribunal further finds that any unnotified deductions have been made from the pay of the employee during the period of thirteen weeks immediately preceding the date of the application, the tribunal may order the employer to pay the employee a sum not exceeding the aggregate of the unnotified deductions made. This means that even where the employer has made legitimate deductions, e.g. PAYE and National Insurance Contributions, it may still be liable to pay the employee a sum equal to this because it had not notified the employee of the deductions by way of a pay slip.

We would suggest that assistance could be provided to employees who might have a particular difficulty in setting up an email address or accessing a PC. For example, some employees may have difficulty in setting up an email address because of language differences or a disability. If such employees cannot access pay slips because they cannot access email/a PC there could conceivably be an allegation of discrimination on grounds of race or disability.

If the employer is unable to secure email addresses for the remaining employees, it must continue to provide such employees with paper pay slips in order to fulfil its obligations under the legislation.