21 Nov 2022
When taking on a new member of staff, or if an employee changes their role in the business, it’s important that their employment contract reflects this. It is advisable to review your contracts regularly to ensure they remain legally compliant.
An experienced employment solicitor can draft or review a contract before your employee signs on the dotted line, thus ensuring that the terms you are offering are in your best interests and if they believe that any changes should be made or added.
They will check that the employment contract complies with current legal requirements alongside analysing specific terms relating to benefit packages, confidentiality clauses, intellectual property protections and termination conditions. Additionally, a solicitor will review any restrictive covenant – a clause in a contract or policy that restricts what a person can do for a certain period of time following the termination of their employment – to make sure they are likely to be enforced by the courts and therefore actually protect your business.
Some parts of an employment contract must be given to employees at the outset of their employment. These include:
Further information is needed but this can be referred to without having to be included in the main statement of terms of employment.
Updates to the law in April 2020 saw changes to who you need to provide the information to, what information needs to be given in a contract, and when it needs to be provided. Since the changes, employers also are required to provide a written statement to employees on or before their first day of employment.
The further information required as per the changes to the law are:
Getting your contracts and policies reviewed is a great place to start and doing it now can help to avoid any issues that may arise in the future. Failure to comply with legal requirements could lead to expensive and long employment tribunal proceedings.