One of the UK’s best-known umbrella companies, Parasol, has experienced a “system outage”, which has resulted in late payments to umbrella employees. Here is what we know – keep reading to find out more. Scroll down for the latest developments.
Parasol is “working tirelessly” to resolve a “system outage”
In a LinkedIn post on Wednesday 12th January 2022, the Parasol Team said the following:
“We are currently experiencing a system outage which is impacting parts of our group. We are working tirelessly to resolve this as a matter of urgency however, you will currently be unable to access My Parasol portal. We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause you. Your ability to contact Employee Support by telephone on 01925 644860 or through LiveChat is unaffected and we are here to support you as always.
If your enquiry is urgent, especially if you are expecting a payment from us today – please message us privately with your full name, employee ID and contact number so we can arrange for a member of our Employee Support team to call you directly. Alternatively you can connect with our team via LiveChat on our website.”
Frustratingly for both Parasol and its employees, the “system outage” has still not been resolved. Here is what Parasol posted on Thursday 13th January to their LinkedIn followers:
“We are experiencing an ongoing systems outage which is impacting parts of our group. You will currently still be unable to access My Parasol portal. We are continuing to make advance payments to employees and you will have received an email today from our CEO, Doug Crawford, providing full information and everything you need to know to stay in contact with us at Parasol. If you were expecting pay, haven’t received it and haven’t heard from us, please get in contact and we will prioritise your payment.
As ever, we apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause you. You are able to contact Employee Support by telephone on 01925 644860 or through LiveChat by visiting https://lnkd.in/d-KGpdWs.
We are here to support you as always.”
The Parasol team will undoubtedly be working extremely hard to resolve the issues affecting their systems and they are actively responding to comments on Twitter.
If you are an employee at Parasol and you are expecting a payment, the following Tweet will be helpful (posted on Wednesday 12th January 2022):
“If your enquiry is urgent, especially if you are expecting a payment from us today – please message us privately with your full name, employee ID and contact number so we can arrange for a member of our Employee Support team to call you directly.”
Parasol has identified “malicious activity”
On Friday 14th January, Parasol issued an update on LinkedIn which stated:
“The root cause of our IT systems issue has been identified as malicious activity on our network. The ongoing forensic exercise and investigations currently indicate that your personal information has not been extracted. To ensure the safety and integrity of your data, we have suspended our systems and you will still be unable to access My Parasol portal.
We are continuing to make same day payments today, as well as over the weekend, to ensure we are reaching employees who are due to be paid as quickly as possible. We know we are not providing our usual levels of support to you and we will of course not apply our usual margin to these payments.
You can contact Employee Support via LiveChat until 7pm tonight or between 10am and 4pm Saturday and Sunday by visiting https://lnkd.in/d-KGpdWs.”
Parasol will do “everything” to support employees
The Parasol LinkedIn page posted an update on Saturday 15th January. It said:
“Payments have already been paid to many employees and we are continuing to process advance payments for many more employees over the weekend. For many, we expect this advance payment will be broadly in line with your normal pay after deductions. We do though fully appreciate that this won’t be the position in all cases.
We will do everything we can to support you. Please connect with our Employee Support team via LiveChat between 10am and 4pm by visiting https://lnkd.in/d-KGpdWs if:
> You are expecting pay, and you haven’t received it yet
> The payment you have received is lower than you were anticipating and this will create hardship.”
Keep using the live chat feature to contact the Parasol team
A social media post on the 17th of January reminded Parasol’s employees to use the live chat feature to contact the umbrella – if necessary.
Update – Please continue to use the LiveChat function if you need to speak to our team, or if you are awaiting payment, please DM us so we can look into it for you straight away. Thank you for your patience and again, we apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing. pic.twitter.com/NE8VLLleBW
— Parasol (@parasolgroup) January 17, 2022
No update in over a week, but a sign that things are returning to normal
There hasn’t been a social media post from Parasol since the 17th of January 2022. As a result, we have just taken a look (24th of January, PM) at the Parasol website to see if we could log in to the My Parasol portal. When we last looked, the Parasol team had replaced the login screen with a message summarising the cyber security issues the umbrella was facing. Now, it appears umbrella employees can log in as standard – which is extremely encouraging.
Below is a screenshot of the portal having just visited the Parasol website:
If any further updates become available, we’ll be sure to share them here.
Do you have any updates?
If you represent Parasol or you’re an umbrella employee at Parasol, please share your comments below, and we’ll publish updates for our readers.
We hope the matter is resolved shortly, and we wish Parasol and its employees the very best.
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