Contracts and handbooks

All employees have a legal right to receive their terms and conditions of employment within two months of starting a new job. This information is usually included in a contract of employment which is an essential document setting out the rights and obligations for employer and employee.

We advise all businesses to have tailored, up to date contracts of employment.  This will give you the right protection you need as a business in the event of disputes arising in the future and the reassurance that you have a clear starting point to resolve any issues should they arise.  It is particularly important to have detailed contracts for senior employees who have access to confidential information and potentially high degrees of influence over your other employees and your customer base.

Contracts of employment should be supplemented by a handbook or separate policies and procedures that set out how broader HR and employment issues will be dealt with on a day to day basis.  Those policies and procedures can cover a diverse range of matters such as disciplinary and grievance, social media, IT security, sickness and family leave and can be tailored to your specific business or sector.  It is a legal requirement (and very advisable) to have certain policies in place. Do see our FAQ’s for more information.

We can work with you to put in place new contracts and handbooks from scratch. We can also work with your existing documents, to review and update them.

If there are terms and conditions within the contracts or policies that you want to change, we can support you to make sure that you follow the correct processes and do not inadvertently expose your business to a claim.

Recent examples of work:

• Issuing new policies for a national retailer to replace a contractual staff handbook
• Putting into place a whole new staff handbook for a local charity
• Preparing contracts of employment and, in conjunction with our Real Estate team, accompanying service occupancy agreements for those with accommodation linked to their work
• Drafting protective clauses for senior team members of an international mining organisation
• Preparing directors’ service agreements for a new tech company
• Drafting senior contracts including tailored post termination restrictive covenants and retention bonuses for key employees in a large international company
• Reviewing employment contracts and handbooks to ensure compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation
• Drafting bespoke clauses for a contract and handbook for a charitable organisation to include express equality and diversity clauses and a car/driving clause and policy