Contracts  

A contract of employment is an agreement entered into by an employer and an employee under which they have certain mutual obligations.

Contracts of employment may be oral or written. They may be of indefinite duration, or for fixed terms. They may be for training, apprenticeship or other purposes. In law, employees have a contract of employment as soon as they start work even where the written statement of employment particulars required by the legislation has not been given to the employee. If no contract of employment exists beforehand, one will come into existence as soon as an employee starts work and, by doing so, demonstrates that he or she accepts the job on the terms offered by the employer. The contract need not be in writing, unless it is a contract of apprenticeship (employers should note however that a contract of apprenticeship may be found by the courts to be implied even if it is not in writing). Its terms can be written, oral, implied or a mixture of all three.

Implied terms might include those that are too obvious to be expressly agreed - for example, a term that the employee must accept reasonable instructions from the employer - those that are necessary to make the contract workable and those that are established by custom and practice in the particular organisation or industry concerned.

The issue of responsibility for tax & national insurance being paid at source by the Swim School, is one that we would recommend you take advice upon from a Qualified Financial Advisor. An employee who works for several swim schools and meets the employee tests on all of the above, may be better served dealing with their tax liabilities personally for example, but where someone who works solely for you, there would be an expectation that you would make the necessary arrangements in-house.

It is a common mistake that by simply asking the teacher to pay their own tax & NI, you consider that they are therefore self employed – this is incorrect, and we recommend swim schools to apply the above tests to help them to come to a determination; or seek advice from the IoS.

Content requirements

The content of a contract should specify a number of things so that there is no ambiguity on the part of either party as to what is expected of one another whilst the contract is in place.

From the outset can we clarify that a contract is not a job description; it should not include details of tasks, but it can refer to a separate job description and how its contents can be varied. This is important – by having the job description (JD) as a document separate to the contract it allows both parties to seek variations to the JD, without necessarily having to rewrite or renegotiate the contract. This gives both parties, much greater flexibility to deal with variations which may occur as a business grows and develops.

The IoS can supply swim schools with template contracts for both employees and service providers. These can be obtained from the IoS employment law consultants.

The general headings for inclusion within a contract are as follows:

1. Who the agreement is between
2. What date the contract commenced
3. The title of the post holder
4. Who the post holder is answerable to, and/or who the post holder is responsible for
5. The normal place or places of work
6. The hours of work being offered each week, or the basis upon which, hours of work will be organised &/or agreed
7. How much they will be paid (this can be specified in an annual amount, an hourly rate or on a specified basis). NB this should not include or refer to holiday pay.
8. Periods of notice required by either party, and may include how this will be calculated, if there is a staggered amount available, based upon continuous length of service
9. Signatures of representatives of the swim school, the employee and any relevant witnesses.
10. Other items should also be included such as Disciplinary and Grievance procedures, holiday pay, sick pay, and are specified below in greater detail.

Upon drafting a contract we recommend it be checked for accuracy; this can be done by IoS employment law consultants.

Employers should note that they are bound by employment law in the way they treat their employees. Over time such laws change and we recommend that swim school owners and managers keep themselves abreast of such matters by checking details of their responsibilities with the IoS employment law consultants, or by visiting a website:

http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/ http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/life/employment.htm