Employment

National Minimum Wage

You must pay your worker at least the National Minimum Wage (NMW). The NMW rate changes annually.

Pensions

Employers are required to automatically enrol eligible workers (known as jobholders) into a qualifying pension scheme. Employers are also required to make contributions to that scheme.

Immigration Checks

You must ensure that any person you intend to employ has the legal right to work in the UK before they start working for you.

Disclosure and barring service checks

If you work with vulnerable people or in security or another area that requires a DBS check (formerly known as a CRB check), you will need to apply for one.

Insurance

You will need to obtain employer’s liability (EL) insurance as soon as you become an employer. EL insurance will help you pay compensation if an employee is injured or becomes ill because of the work they do for you.

HMRC

Register with HMRC as an employer. You can do this up to 4 weeks before you pay your new staff.

Recruitment Process

The recruitment process is very important; both to ensure that you retain the right candidate and that you don’t leave yourself open to any liability. Applicants can bring discrimination claims and so you need to be very careful that you don’t discriminate in any way. You need to be particularly careful not to ask applicants about their health unless it is relevant to their ability to do the job.

It is important to keep a paper trail of the recruitment process to comply with GDPR regulations as well as think about an external privacy notice to cover the recruitment process. This should include the job description, advert and interview records.

The Job Offer

When you have selected the applicant you wish to offer a job to, you can set out your offer in writing. You may wish to consider whether to set a time limit for acceptance of the offer and you should make the offer conditional upon provision of satisfactory references and confirmation that the employee is free to work in the UK or has an appropriate work permit or immigration approval to work.

Terms and conditions of employment

You will need to send details of the job (including terms and conditions) in writing to your employee on or before their first day. The statement should set out the main particulars of employment such as:

The date the employment starts and the date the employee’s period of continuous employment began; pay (or method of calculating it) and interval of payment; hours of work; holiday entitlement and holiday pay; employee’s job title or a brief description of the work; place of work; sick pay; notice period; the days of week that the worker is required to work, whether hours may be variable and details of how they may vary; any paid leave to which the worker is entitled; details of any benefits; any probationary period including conditions and duration; any training entitlement provided by the employer including whether training is mandatory and/or must be paid for by the worker; pension arrangements; refer to collective agreements (if applicable); and details of the employer’s disciplinary and grievance procedure.

It is a good idea to obtain advice on the drafting of your employment contracts. For more senior employees you may want to include restrictive covenant and confidentiality clauses.