Employment checklist

When starting up your own company, you may at some point, need to think about recruiting employees.  This is a big step for any business and needs to be given careful consideration.  How many employees do you think you will need?  Will they be full time or part time or a combination?  Permanent or fixed-term? 

Whichever route you go down, one thing is certain, all employees will need to be given a written statement of employment particulars, referred to as a contract of employment.  This is a legal requirement under section 1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, and must be done within 2 months of your employees starting their employment. 

The following checklist is a guide to what must be covered in order for you to meet your legal obligations.  The written statement must detail the following:

• Name of the employer and name of the employee;
• Job title and description of work;
• Date employment is to commence or the date on which employee’s period of employment began;
• Scale and rate of remuneration (wages/commission/bonus scheme etc);
• The intervals at which remuneration will be paid;
• Terms and conditions relating to hours;
• Terms and conditions relating to holidays;
• Terms and conditions relating to incapacity;
• Terms and conditions relating to any pension scheme;
• The period of notice the employee is entitled to give and receive when terminating employment;
• Whether the role is permanent, and if not, then the term of the role;
• Place of work and address of employer;
• Any collective agreements (workforce agreements usually between an employer and a trade union) which directly affect the terms and conditions of employment;
• Whether the employee is required to work outside of the UK for a period of more than one month and the terms on which this is done; and
• Any disciplinary and grievance procedures applicable to the employee or alternatively, a clause informing the employee how to get access to the disciplinary and grievance procedures.

You can also include information such as company benefits, pay review details, garden leave or clauses to protect confidential information and intellectual property although this is not obligatory. 

Should you wish to contact someone at Taylor&Emmet to help with drafting your employment contracts, or simply to get some more information, please feel free to contact Tom Draper.