Changes to written particulars of employment from 6 April 2020

Less or more?

In short, employers will soon need to give much more information to employees and workers by their start date. Currently, most employers provide a written statement containing basic details, supplemented with signposts to other documents which provide further information. Subject to a limited number of exceptions, the new rules will require employers to provide all prescribed information in a single document, including a range of additional particulars such as details of benefits and remuneration. In practice, this can be tricky because there is a balance to be struck between including sufficient detail on the one hand, and information overload on the other, which obscures rather than clarifies worker rights.

Allow time to prepare

Don’t underestimate the time required to find the right balance when updating templates for both employees and workers. In particular, it takes time to draft the new provisions carefully to ensure that contractual rights to benefits are not created where this is unintended. To help, we produced a briefing note setting out the requirements in more detail.