smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

In employment law there are only three types of employment; employee, worker and self-employed. Terms such as casual, temp and Agency are all well understood until someone questions their definition. A temp, casual or most “Agency” staff are employees, whose expected length of employment is likely to be of short or unknown duration. The Employment Rights Act 1996 states that, “(1) where an employee begins employment with an employer, the employer must give to the employee a written statement of particulars of employment.” and “(2) The statement may be given in instalments…shall be given not later than two months after the beginning of the employment.”

This might seem to imply that if the employee leaves under two months then you do not need to issue one. However, under section 2 (6) it states, “A statement shall be given to a person under section 1 even if his employment ends before the end of the period within which the statement is required to be given.” So every employee must have a statement even if they only worked for you for a few days or a week or two.

If you think complying with the law is an unnecessary burden consider this – how do employees, casuals, temps, workers or sub-contractors know what is required of them? How do you prove he/she was a worker and thus only entitled to limited employment rights? How do you prove that the relationship is that of contractor and sub-contractor? The answer is that you cannot do so unless you have something in writing. That must be clear and unambiguous if the relationship is to work properly – and if, for example you do not have a contract of service for any self-employed workers or subcontractors, HM Revenue and Customs will assume it is an employment one, which will be very expensive.