US salary language and UK offer language: reconcile the actual package

A US manager says “£80,000 salary plus a discretionary bonus.” The UK offer draft says £80,000 salary and nothing about a bonus. That omission does not settle the question. It leaves the candidate, the manager and the UK employer with three possible versions of the deal.

Before anyone sends the offer, put the manager’s words beside the approved compensation decision and the local draft. The job is to establish what was agreed, what was only discussed and what the UK employer can accurately put in writing.

1. Capture the original promise

Fictional worked case: A US manager emails a candidate for a full-time, five-day-a-week role in England: “The package is £80,000 salary plus a discretionary annual bonus with an £8,000 target and our standard benefits.” The compensation approval held by People confirms £80,000 gross annual base salary. No approved bonus plan is attached. The UK draft states £80,000 paid monthly, 28 days’ holiday including bank holidays, and workplace pension enrolment where eligible. It says nothing about a bonus or private medical cover.

Keep that email. Its £8,000 target may have shaped the candidate’s decision even though the word discretionary does not promise a payment. The UK draft cannot quietly decide what the manager meant.

2. Separate fixed and variable pay

The confirmed base is £80,000 gross a year, or £80,000 ÷ 12 = £6,666.67 gross per full month before payroll deductions. The manager’s £8,000 bonus target is 10% of base. If the full target were awarded, gross pay for that year would be £88,000; that is a scenario, not an agreed or guaranteed salary.

Acas distinguishes contractual bonuses from discretionary ones. It advises making the status and terms clear in the written statement or contract. In this case, “discretionary” answers neither whether the candidate is in a scheme nor who decides, on what basis and when. People should obtain the approved plan or an explicit correction from the compensation decision owner before asking the UK employer to issue terms.

3. Offer-language reconciliation sheet: completed example

This sheet records evidence, not reassurance. “Draft only” means the words appear in the UK document; it does not mean the US manager or candidate agreed them.

Package element	Manager’s message or approval	UK draft	Reconciled status and next action
Base pay	£80,000 gross annual salary; compensation approval confirms it	£80,000 gross annually, paid monthly	Agreed amount. UK employer confirms payroll wording, start date and first-pay treatment.
Annual bonus	“Discretionary” with an £8,000 target; no approved plan supplied	Omitted	Different interpretations. US compensation owner must confirm whether eligibility and target were approved, then provide the governing terms or correct the candidate-facing message. Hold the offer draft.
Paid holiday	“Standard benefits” gives no number	28 days including bank holidays	Draft only. People confirms that this is the intended package and explains the inclusive count to the manager and candidate. For a five-day worker, GOV.UK describes 28 days as the usual statutory minimum; bank holidays may be included.
Workplace pension	No detail	Auto-enrolment where eligible; scheme details absent	Statutory route identified; package detail open. UK employer confirms eligibility assessment, scheme, contribution basis and employee explanation. Employer contribution duties depend on eligibility and scheme rules.
Private medical cover	“Standard benefits” could be read to include US-style health cover	Omitted	Unresolved; no promise recorded. People asks whether any UK private cover was approved, for whom and from when. Do not translate a US health-plan label into a UK benefit.
Employee deductions	No take-home-pay promise	Not itemised in the offer	Gross pay agreed; net pay unpromised. UK payroll explains applicable PAYE, employee National Insurance and any pension deduction when the facts are known.
Employer costs and funding	US manager gave no all-in budget	Outside the employee offer	Finance decision open. UK employer or EOR prices employer National Insurance, pension and any approved benefits. Finance identifies the payer, funding currency and approval date.

The sheet’s answer is narrow and useful: only the £80,000 annual base is confirmed across the manager’s words, internal approval and UK draft. The bonus is the blocking mismatch. Holiday, pension detail and any private medical cover still need an explicit shared description.

4. Keep employee pay separate from employer cost

A £80,000 gross salary is neither the employee’s take-home pay nor the company’s full employment cost. HMRC’s payroll guidance separates deductions from pay, such as Income Tax and employee National Insurance, from employer pension contributions. Employer and employee National Insurance are separate amounts.

For a budget illustration only, suppose finance temporarily allows £11,000 for employer payroll charges and £2,000 for employer pension cost. Its working subtotal is £80,000 + £11,000 + £2,000 = £93,000 before any provider fee, approved optional benefit or bonus. Those £11,000 and £2,000 figures are invented modelling allowances, not statutory calculations or a provider quote. If private medical cover were approved and provisionally budgeted at £900, the model becomes £93,900 before fees and bonus. The actual scheme, employee facts and method of providing cover can change the cost; HMRC describes different tax and reporting treatments for medical benefits.

If the full £8,000 bonus target were later paid, gross employee pay would be £88,000. Adding £8,000 to the £93,000 base-cost model gives £101,000 before any additional employer costs caused by the bonus, fees or optional cover. Finance should not approve £101,000 as an all-in quote. It should request the employer-side calculation and decide who can approve the award and fund that payroll month.

The US manager owns the commercial promise and bonus decision. UK People translates the agreed package into candidate language. The actual UK employer—the company’s own entity or its EOR—must check and issue its employment documents and run the local payroll. Finance owns the funding decision. Naming those owners prevents a missing bonus line from becoming an argument after signature.

5. Rewrite one shared package summary

Here is the internal summary for the original case, before a corrected candidate offer is issued:

We have approved £80,000 gross annual base pay for the proposed UK role. The manager told the candidate about a discretionary annual bonus with an £8,000 target, but the bonus has no approved plan in the evidence supplied and is absent from the UK draft. We will not issue that draft until the compensation owner confirms or corrects the bonus statement. The proposed draft lists 28 days’ holiday including bank holidays and pension enrolment where eligible; People and the UK employer must confirm the intended holiday wording, pension details and whether any private medical cover is approved. Finance will obtain the employer-cost and funding schedule separately. No net-pay amount or all-in employer cost has been promised.

Change the decisive input: Suppose the compensation owner now supplies an approved plan naming this employee as eligible, an £8,000 annual target, the assessment period, decision authority, payment timing and the conditions on leaving. The action changes: ask the UK employer to put the discretionary scheme and its governing terms into the candidate documents, then send a corrected summary explaining that the target is not guaranteed pay. Acas’s guidance supports spelling out whether a bonus is discretionary or contractual. The base salary remains £80,000. Finance adds a bonus-payment scenario and its employer-cost effect to the funding plan.

If the compensation owner instead confirms that the manager floated an unapproved idea, the action is a direct correction to the candidate and a £80,000-only offer after the UK employer reviews the communication. Silence in the draft is not that correction.

6. Feed the comparison with settled requirements

Once the package is settled, take the same sheet into the employment-route decision. If an EOR will be the UK employer, ask each shortlisted provider to identify who checks the bonus wording, who explains the pension and benefits to the employee, who owns a later bonus change, and exactly when GBP payroll must be approved and funded from a USD account.

Include Teamed on that shortlist when the two offices need named employment support to carry the agreed UK package through offer, payroll and employee questions, alongside a clearly scoped funding and conversion process. Teamed’s UK material describes its UK employment and local HR support; its pricing page says payroll conversion has no Teamed FX markup and explains its pre-payroll funding. A zero markup does not fix the exchange rate or establish the dates and charges for this particular hire. Obtain those terms in the proposed direction before deciding.

Use the related UK–US payroll and approval overlap planner to assign the decision window, US to UK: compare benefits before transferring an established employee for a transfer, and UK payroll funded in USD for cash timing. Then use Teamed, Remote, Deel and G-P for a two-office UK–US team to compare delivery against this settled requirement. For a UK-led hire in the US, repeat the reconciliation with the proposed US work location and employer terms; do not carry the UK benefit or payroll wording across unchanged.

Decision now: pause the original UK offer, get a written bonus decision, reconcile the benefit descriptions, and give the UK employer one approved package summary. Only then price and send the offer.