- What are the different types of employment status?
- What is my employment status?
- Employees: what are they and what rights do they have?
- Workers: what are they and what rights do they have?
- How can I tell if I’m officially self employed?
What are the different types of employment status?
There are three different types of employment status. It is often difficult identifying which category a person might fall under.
Individuals undertaking work will either be:
- employees – with full statutory employment rights
- workers – with more limited rights, or
- self-employed or have no employment status – with no statutory rights, but they may have rights under their contract and will also have health and safety protection.
What is my employment status?
Everybody will fall under one of the three employment statuses above. Which status will depend on personal circumstances, but some jobs are more likely to fall under some statuses than others.
Employee
Most probably includes: people in typical forms of employment and apprentices.
May include: freelancers, consultants, sessional workers, zero-hours contracts, interns doing work themselves.
Worker
Most probably includes: freelancers, consultants, sessional workers, zero-hours contracts, interns doing work themselves.
May include: volunteers, work experience (if undertaking work rather than just shadowing)
No employment status
Most probably includes: genuinely self employed, work shadowers, volunteers.
Employees: what are they and what rights do they have?
Employees are employed under a contract of employment and will usually be working in a typical employment pattern.
How can we tell if someone is an employee?
For someone to be an employee, they must undertake work which their employer must provide. If the employer is not obliged to provide work and the person is not obliged to undertake any work, there is unlikely to be a contract of employment.
For example, if an individual is not obliged to turn up for work, and the employer has no obligation to provide work for periods of time, they are unlikely to be an employee (although they may still be a worker).
What rights do employees have?
Employees are entitled to the full range of statutory employment rights including:
- unfair dismissal
- redundancy
- the right to a written statement of particulars of employment
- not to be discriminated against
- all the rights of workers.
Workers: what are they and what rights do they have?
Worker is a broad employment status, which includes some legal rights but fewer than an employee has.
A worker does not necessarily meet all the tests for being an employee and is not genuinely self-employed.
The definition of a worker under the employment rights act is someone who works under a contract of employment or “any other contract… whereby the individual undertakes to do or perform personally any work or services for another party to the contract whose status is not by virtue of the contract that of a client or customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by the individual”.
Different definitions are used in the Equality Act and in respect of whistleblowing legislation, but the broad effect is the same.
The Employment Rights Act definition includes people who provide work personally under a contract, where they are not genuinely operating as self-employed, even if they are not deemed to have full employee status.
It also includes most freelancers, consultants, interns, sessional or casual workers, agency workers and those on zero-hours contracts.
All these people may be working with a greater degree of flexibility than in the traditional employee relationship, but are still working personally for someone else and cannot be said to be in business on their own account.
How can I tell if I’m officially self employed?
The genuinely self-employed are excluded from all statutory employment rights. However, they do have contractual rights in if they have agreements to undertake a job.
Self-employment is where the person is genuinely in business on their own account.
Some contracts will be drawn up on the basis that someone is working as self-employed, when in fact they are an employee or worker and have employment protection rights.
Tribunals and courts will consider the reality of the situation, rather than simply accepting the label that the parties involved have given to the relationship.
Some volunteers are not covered as workers or employees and therefore have no employment protection rights.
Get support as a member
Speak with your representatives:
If you work in an organisation that has local Prospect representatives, you should speak to them about any work-related issues.
Call the member contact centre on 0300 600 1878 or email [email protected]