There is a legal requirement under section 1 of Employment Rights Act 1996, to issue employees and workers (reference to employee in this article includes a worker) with a WSOP in a single document no later than the start of employment. It is often referred to as a ‘day one’ right.
The WSOP is a legally binding agreement and in reality it forms a bare bones contract. It is good practice to ask your employees to sign the WSOP, however the fact they carry out the role is implied acceptance of the terms contained within it.
The terms
The terms that must be included in the WSOP are set out below:
- Name of employer and employee
- Job title and main duties
- Start date of employment including any period of continuous employment and if applicable, state if the role is for a fixed period with the start and end dates
- Probation period applicable – if there is no probation period, there must be a statement to confirm this
- Place of work and whether required to work outside UK
- Rate of pay or method of calculating pay and how often it will be paid
- Normal working hours to include the days of the week the worker is required to work and whether or not such hours or days may be variable
- Holiday entitlement including when the holiday year runs from and to and sufficient information to enable the worker to calculate how much holiday pay they will be entitled to, including upon termination of employment
- Sick pay provisions must be stated in the statement. As a legal minimum, workers who meet the eligibility criteria, must be paid at least the statutory sick pay. An employer can decide to pay an enhanced rate of sick pay, often referred to as contractual or company sick pay
- Other paid leave such as maternity and paternity pay
- Additional benefits provided to the employee e.g. accommodation or gym membership (may refer to accessible document such as a staff handbook for fuller details)
- Training provided by employer including details of any compulsory training and whether employer will meet the costs of training
- Pensions and pension schemes (may refer to accessible document such as a staff handbook for fuller details). An employer must enrol eligible employees into a pension scheme under the ‘auto-enrolment’ provisions and contribute towards the pension
- Notice periods to terminate employment. There are statutory minimum notice periods
- Disciplinary and grievance procedures (may refer to accessible document such as a staff handbook for fuller details)
- Collective agreement details
Where there is a variation to any of the above terms, the employer must provide the employee with a written statement of the change(s) no later than one month after the date of the change(s).
Note however, that where there is a transfer of a business under the TUPE Regulations, If the transfer involves only a change to the identity of the employer, then the new employer can simply inform the transferring employees of the identity of the new employer and the date on which the employee’s period of continuous employment began.
How NFU Employment Service can help
NFU Employment Service membership provides many benefits not least access to a comprehensive suite of 160 template documents, including a WSOP all accessible on our website. We update our template documents as and when there are any changes in the law or best practice guidance and they are always reviewed annually so members can feel reassured they reflect current requirements.
There is also the benefit of a document checking service where members can submit their prepared document using the templates to our team of employment advisers for review.
Alternatively, we can do the hard work for you and draft tailored employment contracts for your business as part of our fee paying consultancy service.
For more information on the benefits of becoming a NFU Employment Service member please contact us on 0370 840 0234 or email us at [email protected].
