Open Employment Contract (alpha version)

UK Version 1.0 alpha4 + Remote Working + Average Hours Flexitime + UK Base + No Collective Agreements + Co-location

This is an experimental version of an open system for employment contracts. Both parties will apply common sense and good faith to its interpretation.

Statement of Particulars of Employment

This document doubles as a written statement of the particulars of your employment which we are obliged to give you by section 1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the terms and conditions of your contract of employment with us.

This contract consists of a set of “core” terms and the following options:

Remote Working (you will normally work from home or other place of your choice)

Average Hours Flexitime (your hours of work are an average and there is flexibility about going under or over those hours)

UK Base (you will be primarily based in the UK and we will never require you to work outside the UK for more than a month at any one time unless by mutual agreement)

No Collective Agreements (there are no collective agreements — such as with a union — affecting your employment)

Co-location (we may require you to work in the offices of other organisations)


Core terms

This part of the contract sets out the core terms of the open employment contract. There may be one or more additional optional sets of terms selected by us which will appear after the core terms. The optional sets also form a part of the contract and are not meant to contradict anything in the core terms. In the event that they do, a later term overrides an earlier term.

Employee specific information

The following table (referred to in the rest of the contract as "the particulars") sets out information specific to your employment which varies from the standard OEC version 1.0. The words in italics in the left hand column are to aid your employer in entering the correct information in the right hand column.

Employer

Name and address of employer. If the employer is a registered company, include the number of the company.

Employee

Name of employee.

Location of base

Give the “base” where the employee will first be required to work or write “none” if there is no base (eg if the employee will be remote working)

Range of alternative locations for base

Give the area (eg “Greater London” or “within 10 miles of Liverpool Lime Street Station”) in which the employee’s base might be moved.

Travel range

Give the area (as above) within which the employee might be asked to travel to meetings as a normal part of their work without additional payment(eg "Greater London", "the City of Chester")

Date of Commencement

The date on which the employee started or will start work under this contract.

Date on which continuous employment began

This date will be different from the Start Date if the employee is treated as having continuous employment earlier than the date of commencement (for example if they have transferred under TUPE, or this is a new contract replacing an earlier one).

Job Title

Give the employee’s job title.

Job Description

Give a description (in general terms) of the nature of the employee’s duties (eg “computer programmer”).

Pay

The amount the employee is paid and the period (annually, monthly or hourly) for which it is paid, eg “£18,000 per year” or “£900” per month or “80 per hour”.

When payment takes place

Eg “the third Sunday in every month

Hours

Put here the number of hours of work that you want your employees to work and the time period in which they are to work those hours.  Eg “7 and a half hours a day” or “40 hours a week”. For flexitime put “on average”.

Holiday

Give the total full-time equivalent of days leave employees are allowed in each holiday year.

Holiday year

The extent of the “holiday year” -- that is the year for computing holiday entitlement (eg “each calendar year” or “from 1st April in one year to 31st March in the following year”)..

Probationary period

The employee will be be subject to dismissal without notice during this period (eg “3 months”), which should be for no more than 51 weeks.

Notice

The notice period which (unless overridden by the statutory rules on minimum notice) either party must give the other to end the contract.

Sick pay

Indicate in a short sentence or two the main points of your sick pay. The details will need to go into the Staff Handbook.

Date of Commencement:

Your employment will start on the date given as the “date of commencement” in the particulars.

This date will be the date for the purposes of calculating your statutory period of continuous employment with the company unless a different date is specified in that table. This takes into account any unbroken employment with us, or any associated company and any other service we are required to include as a matter of law. Service with a previous employer will not ordinarily count as part of your continuous period of employment with us.

Pay

You must always maintain a suitable bank or building society account into which payment can be made, and provide us with current details of it. Changes to your bank or building society details must be notified to us in writing.

If your pay is calculated annually, you will be paid 1/12 of your annual pay (as specified in the particulars) each month. If your pay is calculated monthly, that is the amount you will receive each month.

If your pay is given hourly, then you will be paid for the actual number of hours you have worked in any month. For the purposes of hourly pay, we may choose to start a “month” on any particular day of the month, eg we may pay you for the hours you work from 4th of one month until 3rd of the next.

Payment is made each month by transfer to your bank or building society account. The day on which we will instruct payment to take place is indicated in the “when payment takes place” box in the particulars.

If an overpayment occurs (in other words if we pay money to you to which you were not entitled) we reserve the right to deduct the amount of any overpayment from any payment due to you from us (for example your salary), or to recover the amount directly from you.

Location

Your base is where we may require you to work some or all of the time. Most employers will specify a base, but if we have written “none” it means you have no base - perhaps because you will work from home or be peripatetic. The box labelled “location” in the particulars gives the location of your first base if you have one.

If you do have a base, we will ordinarily allow you to work from home or other location of your choosing if the nature of your work allows it and the place from which you intend to work is suitable for the work you are doing. Unless we have agreed otherwise or you are working on a remote working contract, we may still require you to come to your base some or all of the time.

We may change your base to any other place within the area indicated by the “range of alternatives” entry in the particulars, but we will give you reasonable advance notice of the change. Unless this contract includes the “co-location” or “foreign working” options, we cannot require you to work permanently from anywhere else.

We may from time to time require you to attend client or project related meetings, conferences or other events. These may be away from your base (if you have one). We will pay any necessary travel and overnight expenses incurred by your attendance at such events and we will do our best to give reasonable notice consistent with the needs of our business.

Travel time to or from work inside the area designated as your "travel area" in the particulars, will not normally count towards your working hours (eg for the purposes of flexitime or salary based on hours worked) unless you carry out actual work while you are travelling. Eg if you work remotely on the train.

If you are travelling to somewhere outside your travel area, we will ordinarily count at least some of your travel time as “working time”. Exactly how we treat your travelling time for working time purposes will be a matter for us, but we will try to be reasonable about it and comply with any relevant laws in coming to a decision. If you are unhappy with the way in which we have compensated you for travel outside your travel area, you should let your line manager know.  

Hours of Work:

We do not specify specific hours for you to start or end work, nor is there a “normal working day”.

What we expect you to do is produce work that a competent person with your job description would produce working for the same length of time as you. It is up to you to make sure that your starting and ending work times are appropriate for the work you have to do.

Some of your working time will be specifically timetabled by us, for example for meetings and telephone calls, but the organisation of the rest of your time will be a matter for you. Depending on the needs of the business we may schedule all, some or none of your time.

We will try to ensure that tasks allocated to you for specific times occur at reasonable times of the day and on weekdays (Monday to Friday) but the needs of the business may require you to carry out tasks at unusual times, for example if you are required to conduct a telephone conference with an overseas client.

We will ensure that any demands on your time outside hours generally considered to be “working” or “office” hours will not be unreasonable in the circumstances, and in particular, taking into account the nature of what we ask you to do and the time we ask you to do it.

We will require you to record your hours of work (particularly if you are working hourly) in any reasonable manner we choose.

We do not give any performance bonuses under this contract.

Probation

During your probationary period, you may be dismissed without notice. If we dismiss you during your probationary period we do not have to give you any reason for doing so unless we are required to do so by law.

Notice Periods:

Except in cases of gross misconduct when we reserve the right to terminate your employment without notice, your employment will only end either by us giving notice to you or you giving notice to us.

There is only one notice period under your contract — we will give you the same period of notice as you are obliged to give to us.

After the end of your probationary period, the notice period will be that given in the particulars, unless the statutory minimum notice is longer, in which case the statutory minimum will apply.

At the time this contract was written, the statutory minimum notice period was 1 week for each completed year of continuous service up to a maximum of 12 weeks.

Notice to quit will only be effective if given in writing. The Staff Handbook will give details of who to give the notice to and how the notice should be given.

Once a notice to quit has been given (whether from you to us, or from us to you), we reserve the right, at any time after the notice was given while you are still employed with us, to give you pay in lieu of notice. This means that we will pay you as a lump sum, the salary that would otherwise be payable to you during the unexpired portion of your notice period.

Holiday entitlement:

We operate a holiday year as described in the particulars.

The amount of paid leave you may take is indicated in the “holiday” box in the particulars. This amount of leave includes a notional allowance for public holidays but you are not necessarily expected to take leave on those days.

In the first year of your employment your leave will be reduced on a pro-rata basis, by the ratio of the number of days you work in that holiday year to the number of working days in that year (for example 260).

If you are paid hourly, work irregular hours or part-time we will work out your “holiday pay” (i.e. the amount that you will earn for paid holidays) as follows. Your pay will be a proportion of your total annual earnings based on the fraction of time you spend on holiday compared with the rest of the year. For example if you have 5.6 weeks (28 weekdays) holiday in a normal year then your total holiday pay would be 12.03% of your total earnings for that year.

You must give us advance notice before taking your holiday equal to 4 times the number of days of holiday you will be taking. We reserve the right to require longer notice, or to refuse a particular period of notice, where we have a legitimate reason -- for example because of business deadlines. In such cases we will make every reasonable effort to ensure that you are able to take the leave to which you are entitled at a later date.

You may carry over a maximum of 5 days' holiday (or 40 hours holiday pay if you are paid hourly) from one holiday year to the next.

If you leave the company, you will receive payment in lieu for any part of your holiday entitlement which has accrued but which has not been taken. Similarly, if you have taken more holiday than you have accrued, we will deduct the appropriate amount of pay from any payment due from us to you on the termination of your employment or, if this is insufficient, we will require you to make up any shortfall.

Absence from Work

Absence from work due to illness is governed by our absence policy found in the Staff Handbook. If we have indicated anything (other than “none”) against “sick pay” in the particulars, these are the main terms that govern payment during periods of absence due to illness.

We will only pay you while you are absent due to illness if you have complied with any reasonable conditions (including how to report yourself absent) that we may impose from time to time as part of our absence policy.

If, for whatever reason, you do not receive sick pay under this contract, you may be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay.

Pension

We do not operate any employee pension scheme.

Retirement

We do not set any compulsory retirement age.

Confidentiality

You will not use nor disclose to any other person any confidential information acquired by you during the course of your employment for any purpose other than the performance of your duties.

After your employment with us, any information that is sufficiently confidential as to amount to a trade secret must not be used by you in any future employment, or be disclosed to any other person, while that information retains its quality as a trade secret.

On ending your employment with us you must return to us any physical documents given to you, or generated by you, during the course of your employment.

During your employment, you may be given permission to take copies of documents, including computer programs, planning documents and ancillary documentation, in which copyright subsists. Copies may be made available to you in different ways — for example by giving you access to a version control repository. Unless we agree otherwise, your licence to retain and use copies of any such material is limited to the period of your employment with us.

Once you have ceased to work with us you agree that you will delete all copies of any such material (including any backup copies) that remain in your possession or control.

Loyalty

You agree that while you are employed by us you will not, without our prior written consent, carry out any work for or take employment with any employer who is or could reasonably become a competitor of our company. Similarly, you agree not to carry out any work for any employer who is or could reasonably become a client of our company, other than the work you do as part of your employment with us.

You may carry out any other work provided it does not interfere with the performance of your duties working for us.

Quality

During your employment with us, you must complete your work to the best of your ability, and at all times must carry out your work in accordance with our Quality Management Policy.

For further details, consult the Staff Handbook

Disciplinary Rules

Details of our disciplinary rules are contained in the Staff Handbook

Grievances

Details of how to lodge a grievance concerning your employment are contained in the Staff Handbook.

Staff handbook

Further rules concerning your employment with us are contained in the Staff Handbook. Unless otherwise indicated, the contents of the Staff Handbook form a part of your contract of employment. It is your duty as an employee to familiarise yourself with the contents of the Staff Handbook.

The contents of the Staff Handbook will be varied by us from time to time and will be published on our file system, and available for all to view. We will give you advance notice of any substantive change by email. Any variations to the Staff Handbook will be incorporated into your contract of employment from the date on which they are notified to you.


Option: Remote Working

You will not be asked, unless we agree otherwise, to work from a permanent base. Instead you will ordinarily work remotely from a place or places of your choosing. For example, this could be at your home or at a co-working space. You are responsible for ensuring that your place of work is suitable. In particular:

  1. You are required to provide your own equipment (BYOD). We will specify the minimum standards of equipment you need, which may change from time to time, in the Staff Handbook. If your work requires you to have access to particular forms of equipment, we may also instruct you to ensure that you do have such access in addition to the more general requirements in our staff handbook.  
  2. We may specify minimum standards for security, such as password strength, or require certain security systems to be used, both for your personal equipment and for cloud services related to your work
  3. You must maintain an internet connection of sufficient standard to allow you to carry out your work and stay in communication with your team without impediment.
  1. You are required to provide a safe and suitable working environment which meets the standards of health and safety legislation for people working with computers. You are also responsible for ensuring you take adequate rest breaks during your working day.
  2. You must read and comply with our Health and Safety policy in the Staff Handbook.
  3. You should ensure that there is appropriate insurance in place for any business use of the premises you are working from on a regular basis (eg home insurance if you work from home).
  4. You must take particular care if you store organisational data on your personal computer equipment. You should avoid doing so if possible and make sure that you delete any data when it is no longer needed.

Further guidance on remote working can be found in the Staff Handbook.


Option: Average Hours Flexitime

We operate an “average hours” flexible working scheme. You are expected to work, on average, the number of hours given under “hours” in the particulars. Our scheme will allow you to work additional hours over the average to “save up” working time and also to “owe” a certain amount of working time if you have worked under the average.

The details of the scheme - which we may vary from time to time - are found in our Staff Handbook.

“Overtime” - that is hours worked beyond the maximum normally permitted by the scheme requires advance agreement with your manager.


Option: United Kingdom Base

Your base (if any) will be in the United Kingdom. We will not ask you to work outside the UK for a period of more than one calendar month at any one time. If you work remotely and wish to do so from outside the UK, you must agree that with your manager in advance.


Option: No Collective Agreements

There are no collective agreements affecting your terms of employment.


Option: Co-location

The nature of your employment requires you to work on the premises of other employers who may be some distance away from your normal place of work under the terms set out below.

Maximum length of any co-location

Put the maximum period (eg. 6 weeks) that you may ask an employee to work continuously at another site.

Total period of co-location in any year

Put the maximum period of time (eg 3 months) in any year that an employee may be asked to work at another site cumulatively.

Geographical extent of co-location

The geographical area in which an employee may be asked to co-locate. The area should be limited to, or contained in, the United Kingdom unless you are using the Foreign Working option.

“Co-location” means working somewhere other than your base. We may ask you to co-locate anywhere within the area designated as the “geographical extent of co-location”. We may not ask you to do so for a period longer than that given as the “maximum length of any co-location” in the table of parameters and not for a total longer than that given as the “total period of co-location in any year” given in the table of parameters.

We will pay all reasonable costs and expenses associated with your co-location. We may include a detailed guide to what we consider reasonable and the practicalities of claiming any costs and expenses in the Staff Handbook.


Signature

We agree to employ you on the terms set out above


Signed on behalf of the employer

Dated:

I have read and understood this statement and accept this statement incorporating the rules set out in the Staff Handbook, as the terms and conditions under which I am employed by you.


Signed

Dated