When does an employee have a contract of employment and what should it contain? Read further to find out.
An employee always has a contract of employment with their employer and while the employee may not have anything in writing a contract will still exist.
An employer and employee can agree to whatever terms they wish to be in the contract but an employee cannot normally agree to a contractual term which gives fewer rights than they have under law (called statutory rights).
All employees, irrespective of the number of hours they work, are entitled to a written statement of their main terms and conditions of employment within two months of starting work.
The written statement should contain the following information:
· the names of the employer and the employee;
· the date when the employment (and the period of continuous employment) began;
· the scale or rate of pay and the intervals at which it is to be paid;
· hours of work;
· holiday entitlement;
· entitlement to sick leave and sick pay;
· pensions and pension schemes;
· the entitlement of employer and employee to notice of termination;
· job title or a brief job description;
· disciplinary and grievance procedures;
· where it is not permanent, the period for which the employment is expected to continue or, if it is for a fixed term, the date when it is to end;
· either the place of work or, if the employee is required or allowed to work in more than one location, an indication of this and of the employer’s address;
Other elements can be included in the written statement.
Some employers treat new employees as being in a probationary period when they first start work and try to argue that during this period employees do not have the usual employment rights, for example, the employer does not have to pay statutory sick pay, statutory maternity pay or pay in lieu of notice. There is no such thing in employment law as a probationary period and the employee will start to acquire their statutory rights from the first day of their employment not from the time when a probationary period is over. Probationary periods are primarily used to clarify that new employees are expected to achieve certain standards within a specific time period.
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