Establishing your business in the UK may mean you need to think about recruiting a UK workforce. Before you start recruiting, you should know what rights your new staff will have; UK employment laws could differ markedly from what you’re used to at home.
In the UK, people that make up an employer’s workforce are categorised as either an employee, a worker or self-employed (often called a contractor or consultant). For this this article, we’ll concentrate on employees and focus on their legal rights, which UK employers will need to be aware of and adhere to.
Who is an employee?
UK employment law defines an employee as a person who has entered into, or works under, a contract of employment. A contract of employment means a contract of service and can be express or implied and if express, can be oral or in writing. We would always recommend though that a contract is agreed between the parties in writing – to create certainty of terms (and in fact new legislation introduced over recent years has made written terms a day one requirement). The handbook we have prepared contains a list of factors that indicate that an individual is working as an employee.
Employees are entitled to a wide range of statutory rights and protections, whether they are employed full-time, part-time, permanently or for a fixed term. By comparison, a worker is entitled to a more limited range of statutory employment rights; and a self-employed person has few statutory rights.
If an employer employs...
To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. 2 min One account known for spreading anti-Indian disinformation and fake news shared what it...