Keeping up to date
We take seriously our responsibility to keep you up to date so that you can use changes in employment law to commercial advantage. By understanding and interpreting the latest case law and legislation we can deliver updates to you that are concise and usable. With imagination, we are able to ensure that developing law can be used to allow you to achieve commercial solutions, cost effectively and expediently.
Employment contracts and the ‘3Cs’ – pt.1 | Compliance
It’s safe to say I’ve seen a few employment contracts in my time! A non-compliant employment contract can be expensive – a tribunal can award up to four weeks’ pay for each out-of-date contract you’re using.
Key areas of compliance for employment contracts were introduced in 1996 by the Employment Rights Acts…there’s no excuse for getting those elements wrong! More recently in 2020, the Good Work Plan added more red tape with further compliance requirements which employers have been slow to adopt. Here are the top five areas I’ll see regularly missing from employment contracts:
- Any paid leave the employee benefits from (maternity or paternity leave, for example)
- Details of all remuneration and benefits (such as enhanced maternity pay or private medical insurance)
- Training requirements for the role, whether they’re mandatory, and who will pay for the training
- Whether working hours are variable (or not as the case may be)
- The correct statutory minimum notice employees are entitled to (one week for each complete year they’ve worked for you, up to a maximum of 12 weeks)
Reference to these areas needs to be included within the contract, even if they don’t apply. If there is no training requirement for example, you need to say as much.