Your first employee starts on Monday. You have agreed the money and the hours in a conversation and a text message, and you intend to sort out the paperwork properly once you know it is working out.
That is two months late before they have taken their coat off. Since 6 April 2020, the written statement of employment particulars has to be given on or before the first day of work, and the right extends to workers, not only employees.
The day-one statement is a legal requirement with a list
Section 1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 sets out what the principal statement must contain. Most of it is what you would expect, and a few items catch people out.
The statement must cover the names of employer and worker, the date employment begins and the date continuous employment began, pay and the intervals at which it is paid, hours of work including any variable days or hours and how they are decided, holiday entitlement and holiday pay, the place of work, the job title or a brief description of the work, and any probationary period with its conditions and duration.
It must also cover entitlement to sick leave and sick pay, any other paid leave, any benefits, notice periods on both sides, the length of a temporary or fixed-term job, any training you provide or require, and details of any collective agreements. Certain items may be given in instalments within two months, but the principal statement itself is a day-one document.
Get it wrong and there is no direct penalty on its own, but if an employee brings another successful tribunal claim, the tribunal can award two or four weeks' pay for the failure to provide a proper statement. It is an unforced error.
A statement is not quite the same thing as a contract. The contract exists from the moment the offer is accepted, written or not. The statement is the record of its main terms. In practice most small employers issue a single document that does both, which is sensible.
Probation does not do what people think it does
A probation period is useful. It sets expectations, it gives you a defined review point, and it can be linked to a shorter notice period and to the withholding of certain contractual benefits.
What it does not do is create a period in which the employee has no rights. Some rights apply from day one: the right not to be discriminated against under the Equality Act 2010, the right to statutory notice after one month of service, the right to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage, rights around health and safety, and protection for whistleblowing. None of those pause during probation.
The right that has historically depended on service is unfair dismissal, which has generally required two years of continuous service. The Employment Rights Act 2025 provides for removing that qualifying period and making protection from unfair dismissal a day-one right, with the detail and the commencement dates being phased in through regulations. Because the implementation timetable has moved, check the position in force at the time you are dismissing somebody, rather than relying on what was true when you wrote your handbook.
Either way, the useful practice is unchanged: set the probation period, put a review in the diary before it ends, hold the review, write down what was said, and either confirm the appointment or act. Probation periods that expire unnoticed are how underperformance becomes permanent.
Notice, hours and holiday have statutory minimums
Statutory minimum notice from you to the employee is one week after one month's service, then one week for each complete year of service up to a maximum of twelve weeks. From the employee to you it is one week after one month, regardless of length of service. You can contract for longer on either side but you cannot go below the statutory minimum.
Working time is governed by the Working Time Regulations 1998. The average working week is limited to 48 hours over a 17-week reference period, and an individual can opt out of that limit only by an agreement in writing, voluntarily, and they can withdraw it on notice. A blanket opt-out buried in a handbook is not a valid opt-out. Daily rest of 11 consecutive hours, weekly rest, and an uninterrupted 20-minute break on shifts longer than six hours are not opt-outable in the same way.
Holiday is 5.6 weeks, which is 28 days for a five-day week and may include bank holidays. For irregular hours and part-year workers, the rules on accrual and on rolled-up holiday pay were changed for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, so if you employ casual staff, look at the current method rather than the one you used before.
Pay must be at least the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage for the worker's age band. The rates are recommended annually by the Low Pay Commission and normally change each April, and the National Living Wage was £12.21 an hour for those aged 21 and over from April 2025. HMRC enforces this, can require repayment of arrears at current rates, can impose a penalty of up to 200% of the underpayment, and publishes the names of employers who underpay.
Some clauses are unenforceable however firmly you write them
Small employers copy contracts from the internet, and the internet contains a great deal of American drafting and a certain amount of wishful thinking.
- A non-compete restricting an ex-employee from working in the industry is only enforceable so far as it protects a legitimate business interest and goes no further than reasonable in scope, geography and duration. Six months, narrowly drawn around actual clients, has a chance. Two years covering the whole country does not, and an unreasonable restraint is void rather than read down.
- A clause deducting training costs from a final salary must be a genuine pre-estimate of loss, agreed in writing in advance, and tapered. A flat penalty is a penalty clause and unenforceable, and unlawful deduction from wages is itself a tribunal claim.
- A clause stating the employee has no right to the National Minimum Wage, to statutory holiday, or to statutory sick pay has no effect. Statutory rights cannot be contracted out of, except by a settlement agreement meeting the statutory conditions or through Acas.
- A clause requiring an employee to repay recruitment fees, or to work unpaid trial shifts of any length, will not survive contact with the minimum wage rules.
- A flexibility clause allowing you to change any term at any time is read narrowly by tribunals and will not by itself justify imposing a significant detrimental change.
Two more things worth doing on day one. Carry out and record a right to work check before employment begins, because the civil penalty for employing someone without the right to work runs to tens of thousands per worker and has been increased sharply. And confirm in writing what you will do with the employee's personal data, since UK GDPR applies to employment records like any other processing.
Acas publishes model terms and guidance for nothing, and its Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures matters because an unreasonable failure to follow it can increase a tribunal award by up to 25%.
Where this shows up in the game
Business Baron treats employment as a relationship with rules, not a slider. Staff have contracts, notice periods and entitlements, and cutting corners produces disputes that cost more than doing it properly would have. Dismissing someone badly is expensive in the game for the same reasons it is expensive in a tribunal. The first contract you issue, in the free game or the full one, is usually where players discover the staff are not simply a cost line.