The thing about one-stop shops is that if they do not stock what you want, they become next best thing to useless. Anyway, welcome to the government’s new Guidance on Employment Status, expressly billed in the accompanying press release as meeting all your worker status needs in one handy document.
In fairness to the government, it is only responding to popular demand. Almost the only consistent output from the 64 questions in its 2018 Consultation on employment status is a despairing cry from all those who responded (from individuals to unions to employers to lawyers) for a greater degree of certainty around who is a worker and who is not. After all, much hangs upon that question – entitlements to pension rights, holiday pay and the minimum wage on the one hand, for example, and protections from discrimination or under TUPE on the other. Gig economy-driven case law over the last six years or so has shown that it is easily possible for employers to lose sight of the line between worker and full self-employment and wholly unknowingly rack up liabilities potentially posing an existential threat to their business. A clearer set of rules about that line would just have to help.
However, while everyone wanted that clarity, there was no consensus on what it should be. Some respondents to the Consultation favoured codification of the question, some sought a statutory definition or more mechanical box-ticking exercise, and some not. Some saw the question as one of social...
On September 14, 2026, the Department of Justice announced that Accenture Federal Services, Accenture plc, and Accenture LLP agreed to pay $25 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations that ...