Do You Have to Pay Staff for Training Time?

A Saturday training day. An unpaid induction week before the "real" job starts. Most employers assume this sort of thing is fine, and that training is somehow separate from normal working time.

Often, it isn't. And the reason surprises people, because the answer doesn't depend on whether training feels optional. It depends on whether it was actually required.

The short answer: do you need to pay staff for training time?

If you require an employee to do the training, and it's connected to their job, that time is working time for minimum wage purposes. It has to be paid, at least at the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage rate.

Whether you also pay for the course itself, the fee, the materials, the trainer, is a completely separate question. You can cover every penny of a course and still be in breach of the law if you don't pay for the hours someone spent sitting in it.

Does training count as working time?

Yes, where it's required and job-related. HMRC's National Minimum Wage Manual treats training an employer requires, and which is wholly or mainly connected to the work, as time that counts towards minimum wage calculations, regardless of where it happens or whether the employer directly pays the training provider.

The Working Time Regulations 1998 take the same view. Working time includes any period someone is working, at their employer's disposal, carrying out their duties, and specifically includes time spent receiving relevant training.

Can you make staff train in their own time?

You can schedule training outside normal hours if there's a contractual basis for it. But if attendance is genuinely required, that time still counts as working time, wherever it sits on the calendar.

This creates a second problem beyond pay. The Working Time Regulations also guarantee rest periods: 11 consecutive hours of daily rest, and at least 24 hours a week (or 48 hours a fortnight). Mandatory training that eats into a rest period isn't just an underpayment risk. It can breach those rest entitlements too.

Is unpaid training illegal in the UK?

Not as a blanket rule, no. There's no law that says "all training must be paid." But where training is mandatory and job-related, treating the time as unpaid breaches minimum wage law. The label you put on it, "optional development," "induction," "shadowing," doesn't change the analysis. What matters is whether it was actually required.

The above-minimum-wage trap

Here's the bit that catches out employers who think they're already doing it right.

Say someone normally works 37 hours a week at £13.00 an hour, comfortably above the National Living Wage. One week, they also attend an 8-hour mandatory Saturday training day, unpaid, because it's been labelled as "extra."

Their pay for that week is still £481.00 (37 hours at £13.00). But they've actually worked 45 hours. Divide it out, and their average hourly pay across that pay reference period drops to roughly £10.69, well below the National Living Wage floor of £12.71 (from April 2026). Every other hour that week was paid correctly. The unpaid training hours alone pulled the average under the line.

This is the trap. Paying above minimum wage doesn't protect you if unpaid hours are quietly dragging the average down.

Three ways employers accidentally breach NMW on training

1. Scheduling mandatory training in an employee's own time. A Saturday session, an evening course, anything required but placed outside paid hours.

2. Unpaid induction or onboarding. Treating the first few days or weeks as a trial that doesn't count as work, even though attendance is compulsory.

3. Deducting training costs from pay. Even with a valid clawback clause in the contract, a deduction that takes someone's pay below minimum wage for that pay reference period is unlawful, regardless of what the contract says. (More on getting clawback clauses right in a separate post on recovering training costs from an employee.)

What about genuinely voluntary training?

Training an employee freely chooses to do, that isn't required for their role and isn't directed by you, can sit outside working time. But draw this line carefully. The test is whether the employer required it, not what it's called on the invite. A course badged as "optional" that everyone is expected to attend in practice is not genuinely voluntary.

Enforcement is tightening

Minimum wage enforcement is in the process of moving to a new body, the Fair Work Agency, which now holds formal responsibility for it. HMRC is still delivering the day-to-day enforcement work under contract while the full transfer completes over the next year or so, but the direction of travel is clear: oversight isn't loosening, it's being consolidated and, if anything, sharpened.

For a business that's never had a wage query flagged, that might feel distant. For one that's about to run a training day and hasn't thought about the pay reference period, it's worth getting right now rather than after a complaint lands.

Getting it right

The fix isn't complicated, but it does need to be deliberate. Clear contract wording on what training is required and how it's paid, a training policy that says the same thing consistently, and a quick check of your pay reference periods whenever a training day is scheduled. That's usually enough to keep you the right side of the line.

I help business owners get this wording right before it becomes a problem, not after. If you're not sure your training pay is correctly structured, or you want a policy that actually reflects what happens in practice, let's have a look together.

Ready to check where you stand?

Book a free chat, with no obligation, via Calendly, and we'll go through what needs tightening up.