Your guide to Employment Status

Determine employee rights and your responsibilities

One of the difficult decisions when taking on more resource for your business can be deciding the new person’s employment status. Getting this wrong can be expensive in terms of potential employment tribunal claims and subsequent awards.

Employment status is a high-risk area of HR. Several high-profile employment law cases have shown the repercussions of incorrectly classifying employees and workers as self-employed.

Employers engaging independent contractors or seeking to change a working relationship with an existing employee need to be especially cautious with employment status.

What is employment status?

Employment status helps to determine a person’s employment rights and the employer’s responsibilities. In UK employment law the main types of employment are:

• Employee
• Worker
• Self-employed