A Guide to Our Job Offer Letter

by Kate Mccormack - Solicitor

Our guide to our job offer letter template.

About this Job Offer Letter

This Job Offer Letter is for use by an Employer to make or confirm an offer of employment and the basic terms of the employment being offered.

Paragraphs in this Job Offer Letter

You should insert the name of the person to whom the letter will be sent, the job title, the base salary and any bonuses and any other terms that may have been discussed during the interview. More specifically:

Location - here you should enter the address of the main place of work of the Employee. You should also detail anywhere else that the Employee may have to work during their employment as otherwise making them do so may constitute a change in their terms and conditions to which they must consent.

Work Hours - when stating the Employee’s working hours, you should have regard to the Working Time Regulations. Clause 8.3 does not enable you to require the Employee to work for longer than the maximum period allowed under the Regulations. This will depend on the nature of the work but for most employees it is not more than 48 hours a week on average. An Employee can contract out of the maximum limit. Such agreement must state expressly that they are contracting out of the Regulations and must be in writing in the employment contract or elsewhere and signed by the Employee.

Job Title - you should insert the Employee’s job title and the name of the supervisor or line manager that they will report to, if relevant to your business.

Holiday Entitlement - full time employees have a minimum entitlement to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday under employment law. You can offer them more than this if you wish to. The minimum entitlement can be inclusive of bank and public holidays or you may wish to offer these in addition. You can control when and how employees take their holiday and can add additional clauses to the contract to deal with this. Here, the minimum entitlement is specified as exclusive of public holidays so should add up to the requisite 28 days’ for a full time employee.

Pension Scheme - this clause leaves it to you to enter details of your company pension scheme. At present, employers must offer their employees access to either a stakeholder pension scheme or the company’s occupation pension scheme. You should state which applies in this clause.
From 2012, the Pensions Act of 2008 requires employers to automatically enrol any employees who are over 22, who earn over a basic amount and who are not already in one, into a Qualifying Workplace Pension. This is a scheme that involves compulsory employer’s contributions equal to or in excess of a minimum percentage of the employees’ earnings. If you do not operate such a scheme, you must enrol your employees into the Government’s default scheme.
[Medical] Insurance - you do not have to offer an employee private medical or other insurance but can enter the details here if you do offer such benefits.

Probationary Period and Termination - employment law sets out minimum periods of notice that must be given to employees depending on how long they have been working for the employer. The legal minimum is one week for between one month and two years’ of continuous employment after the probationary period and one additional week for each year of employment after that, up to a maximum of 12 weeks’ notice. You can provide for longer than the statutory minimum. This clause provides for the usual period of 4 weeks’ notice on either side.

Contact Details – you should enter the details of someone that the Employee can contact within your company/business about the job offer and this letter.

Signature – the potential Employee should be sent a copy of the letter to sign and return to you. Once the Acknowledgement has been signed and returned by the potential Employee, there will be a binding Contract of Employment in place, conditional on satisfactory references being received in advance of the start date. The Employer will then need, by law, to send to the Employee a full written statement of their Terms of Employment in the form of a Contract of Employment document, within two months of the Employee starting work.