Contract of Employment

All employees have a contract of employment with their employer.  A contract is an agreement that sets out an employee’s:

• Employment conditions
• Rights
• Responsibilities
• Duties

These are called the ‘terms’ of the contract.

There are hundreds of templates, free or otherwise on the web but it really is worth deciding in advance the type of relationship you want with your employees, otherwise, there is a danger you’ll be led by a template to enforce rules that are not important to the employer and onerous to the employee.

Areas to consider within a contract of employment

• What hours do you want your employees to work?
• How many days holidays do you want them to have?
• Where do you want them to work?
• Do you want to still pay them if they are off sick?
• What notice do you want them to have on termination?
• Do you want to restrict their activity should they finish working for you?

In practice the requirements will differ with the seniority of the employee and the role they fulfil, a one size fits all type of contract of employment can be difficult to use.

So decide how you want the relationship with employes to be, look at a few templates, move them around and create a structure before you need them.

For all the information about employment and contracts of employment visit the ACAS website – www.acas.org.uk

Don’t include restrictive clauses you have no intention of trying to enforce.  They could stop a valuable employee coming to work for you.  Seek professional help from HR consultants and experts.

Yorkshire Powerhouse – thinking about contracts of employment

Have you any questions?

Here at Yorkshire Powerhouse, we’re happy to help as much as possible – is there anything else we can do to help you, do you have any further questions or can we help introduce you to an expert – please let us know: