The Contract of Employment
Define the term ‘Contract of Employment’
This is a contract that demonstrates the right or responsibilities between parties to a bargain, the main focus of an employment contract is most of the time over the wages of the employee, also on this sort of contract may be how many hours they are expected to work, what time they can have on holiday, a retirement plan or a benefit plan for example like a health benefit plan. Some businesses use clauses to protect their trade secrets after the employee has left the business so that once they leave they can’t tell other people what they have learnt while they were there. In the contracts in the UK they have implied terms which means they are not written down on the contract but they are implied by the employer, and they have explicit terms which are the terms that are written down on the contract. Both the employer and the employee are expected to behave in a way so that they can keep their trust in each other.
The main elements of a contract of employment:
A job is either full or part time a part time job is where for example they only work a few days for a few hours, whereas if the employee are doing a full time job then they there are there most days for the most of the day, these shifts will be specified in the contract because some permanent jobs are not how I have stated.
The job is also either permanent or temporary, this is pretty self explanatory, as if the employee’s job is temporary then the employee is scheduled to do this job for a certain time period till the contract wears out this is normally a short amount of time like a few months but they have exceptions to this. A permanent job is where the employee is not scheduled to work for a certain amount of time and the employee’s contract will only end when the employee leaves.
On the contract the employer will state the hours that they want this employee to work. This will include what breaks they are allowed to have, in a lot of jobs they have shifts to work so also on the contract they will state how many shifts they are expected to do. The employees may also want to work over time either because they need the money or because they really enjoy their job this over time will have to be agreed by the employee and the employer.
They will also have to state where the employee is expected to work as it may effect whether the employee wants to work for them as they are going to be spending a lot of their time in their place of work. This work place may be in an office or it may be in an outlet, in fact it could be anywhere that the person is going to work so for example an employee may work in to place like an office but then they are expected to spend half of their hours in the shop so the work place would be the office and the shop.
Also stated in the contract will be what benefits they will get from the job so for example if you work in any of the Arcadia then your get a discount of all the stuff in any of the shops that are part of the Arcadia group. The contract will also include what amount of time they are aloud off for their holiday this holiday can be taken at any time but will usually be agreed between employee and employer.
Draw a scatter diagram (with images) to show the elements included in a contract of employment:
Include: Permanent or temporary
Full or part time
Hours of work (including shift, flexitime, overtime, breaks)
Places of work (including offices, retail outlets, tele-working, mobile & home based working)
Pay and benefits, including holidays
Then explain briefly what contract law requires for 6 elements of the above
The contract of employment will vary from job to job but there are certain requirements in law for every employee. For example:
Working arrangements for NIC employees
Describe in as much detail as possible, what the working arrangements are like for employees at the NIC:
1 Rink Assistants
First explain what the job is, then fill in the grid in as much detain as possible, using the
information below:
Permanent job
Part time
Only come to work as and when needed
Pay - £5.25 per hour
Receive ‘Employee of the Month Awards’
If they get paid double if they are asked to work over their allotted time
2 Operations Manager
First explain what the job is, then fill in the grid in as much detain as possible, using the information below:
permanent role
Hours – 9.00-5.00pm, but needs to work flexible hours as needs to attend concerts and events
Does not get paid overtime
Has to work bank holidays when there is an event
Works 5 days a week
Able to work flexi hours
3 Duty Manager
First explain what the job is, then fill in the grid in as much detain as possible, using the information below:
Permanent job
Work shifts on a three week rota between 3 Duty Managers
Have to cover the work of the person on holiday or ill
Do not get paid overtime – they get time off in lieu
The impact of NIC staff
Explain how important you think each job role is in contributing to the effectiveness of the NIC i.e. how does the work of the skate hire staff contribute to the smooth running of the NIC
The suitability of NIC working arrangements
Explain in detail how suitable the working arrangements are for each job (relate to NIC effectiveness) i.e. do you think shift work for the Duty Managers is the most effective timing for that role?
Possible improvements to working arrangements
Suggest recommendation for how the working arrangements for each job role could be improved for the benefit of the NIC.
Consider the following:
working hours
contract terms
unsocial hours
arrangement for breaks
leave of absence
How would the changes you have recommended affect the role of management at the NIC?
Flexibility in the workplace
Explain why working arrangements need to be flexible
Include: Increased productivity
Improve the quality of the products
Be more competitive than rivals
Introduce new technology
Introduce new ways of working, e.g. teamworking and multi-skill practices
Businesses increasingly use their workforce flexibility, this means their hours of work can vary depending on the needs of the business. These are the two main reasons for this:
So that they can get better value for money from them.
To attract people to apply for jobs
Types of Flexibility
Numerical Flexibility
This is where the employers change the working hours of the employees either weekly or daily. They may also change the number of staff that they have working at that time, this may happen because of the demand of the customers or because the business needs them to take on extra responsibilities in their job roles. Or the employers may decrease the hours because they don’t need the employees to work all the hours that they were.
This means that the business is only paying the employees to work the hours that they really need them to. Because of this the employees obviously don’t like this because they will get varied pay from week to week and it is good to know how much money is coming in per week.
Functional Flexibility
This is where the employees are moved from job to job so that they can move can fulfil the full potential of business. This again can be unpopular with the employees because when they apply for a job they are expecting to do the job they have applied for not what the business wants them to do. Although to counter this some employees like change so by doing all these different jobs they enjoy it. Another advantage o them doing this is that they can get loads of different experiences doing all the different jobs, which may be helpful when applying for future jobs. The ability to be able to carry out multiple jobs is called multi skilling.
Financial Flexibility
This is where the company saves money by getting other businesses to do some of their work for them. These companies will do this job but for a lot cheaper than they could get it done by, although it is sometimes not that ethically right. An example of this is Primark uses external companies to make there clothes for them because they could do a lot cheaper for them to do it, as they hire people in places like India who will do it for cheaper as they have no option of weather or not they want to be paid more as they need the money. Also in these foreign countries the minimum wage is a lot lower than the minimum wage in the UK, so as long as the working conditions are reasonable then it is legal to do so. This is called outsourcing as they are using outside companies.
Annualised hours
Annualised hours is where on an employers contract it states that they should work so many hours but in reality they only work the hours that the business needs them to work weather they business needs them to work more or less hours. Sometimes when the company needs them to work extra hours they could either pay them overtime which is more than the normal pay or they can get less hours at the end of the year to make up for the extra hours they did. The employee gets the same weekly and monthly pay unless they do extra hours in which case they will get paid more this is true most of the time and exception to this would be if the employee is working on commission in which they get paid for whatever they sell.
Zero Hour contracts
This is when an employee is ‘on call’ this is where they come into work when they are needed. For the time that they are not in work they don’t get paid this sort of activity is not unusual in retail as they will be called in s and when they are needed so for example they would need to bring them in at the weekend or near to Christmas.
Job Sharing
Job sharing is the term used to describe when an employee is asked to do something in there job that has not been specified in their contract, if they are to do this it has to be approved by their manager. This may appeal to some employees as some people like change although it may not appeal to other people because they may feel they are working harder and not getting paid the right amount for the amount of time they are working. This technique is often used in companies so that they only need to pay the amount of people they need to work at that time instead of paying people that they don’t need to.
Teleworking
This is the term used to describe when an employee works away from the central place of work, but maybe asked to come into the central place of work when they are needed in the workplace. The term teleworking is defined as an employee working away from the central place of work but communicating with employer on the telephone. This maybe good for an employee because they might have family that they want to spend time with, or an employee may not like this as they may like to be in the work place to make friends with the other employees.
What are the effect of these changes on employees?
These working arrangements may affect the employees as they mostly affect the working hours and the pay of the employees. For example if you are working a zero hour contract they are only getting paid for the amount of time they spend in work, this means the pay will vary from week to week, the employee will not like this because they cannot predict how much money is going to come into their bank account each month. These terms may also be beneficial for the employee as say for example they are job sharing they could like the change also they will get the experience working in the different jobs this will be beneficial as if they apply for another job they will look at job sharing as a good thing because they are getting better experience in more than one job.
Another example where these job agreements may benefit the employee is teleworking this is because they may have children and they want to spend as much time as they canwith them. If the employee is in the workplace then one they are not getting to spend time with their children but also they have to pay for somebody else to look after their kids. So if they are working at home then they only have to pay someone to look after their kids when they are in work.
What are the effects of these changes on employers?
These working arrangements benefit the employers as in a lot of cases they can save money by using these. For example if a company uses financial flexibility, they can pay an external company to do the work they need for cheaper than they can do it themselves. This often happens in other countries because the minimum wage in other countries is much lower so if thy get these people to do it then they have to pay out a lot less than they would have in the UK. Also people in other countries will work a lot harder than they do in this country because they are all struggling for money, they work a lot harder because they need to support their families.
Another example when these working arrangements may be good for the employers is when they have a zero hour contract then they are only paying for them to come in to work when they are needed. This is very much like the job sharing contract as again they are paying only the people they need even if it not what their job role specified in their contract.
Toby Price GCSE Business Studies
Permanent or temporary
Full time or Part time
Breaks
Hours of work
The place of work (offices)
The pay
Sales Director
Finance Director
Production director
Company Secretary
Finance Managers
Sales Manager
Human Resource Manager
Production Manager
Sales Supervisors
Production Supervisors
Accounts Supervisors
Office Supervisors
Production Operatives
Administrative Assistants
Accounts Assistants
Sales Assistants
Directors
Managers
Supervisors
Operatives
Head teacher
Deputy Head
Assistant Heads
Head of Year
Head of Subject
Other Managing Positions
Subject Teachers
Tutors
Managing Director
Name Wakas Masood
