Employment Contract Essentials

Avoid costly mistakes from poorly written employment contracts! As many businesses begin to ramp up their hiring process in anticipation of fall employee turnover, you will be writing A LOT of employment contracts. These documents are your source of proof for key components of the employee-employer relationship and something employers tend to spend little time reviewing and updating.

If you’ve ever had do navigate a labour board complaint, organizational restructures, or internal promotions then you know how important language in employment contracts are. Most employers lose labour disputes because of poor documentation — don’t let that be you! Make sure you have these key areas covered in your employment contract…

1. Start Date

   Sometimes when you are putting together an employment contract, you are still negotiating the final details with your new hire, including start dates. These dates may change after the employment contract is signed, or may be left blank until a date is confirmed. Regardless of the scenario, or the best of intentions, make sure the start date is accurate on the final employment contract. This date is often used for determining benefit entitlement, vacation earned, separation pay entitlement, and more.

2. Guaranteed Hours

   If you are hiring full-time vs part-time, make that clear in your employment contract. Take it one step further to clarify whether these hours are guaranteed or not. When you are hiring a salaried employee, hours are typically guaranteed however when you are hiring an hourly customer service employee, they may have variable hours. Making this clear in your agreement will save disputes down the road should business get slow and you need to adjust hours or if you have schedule changes .

3. Signature

   Surprisingly, this may be one of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make: not getting a signed copy of the employment contract on file. The employment contract means nothing without a signature on it! Even if you agree to terms over email, make sure to have all documents signed on their first day at work.

   Psssst…. and remember, both the manager and employee need to sign the employment agreement!

Reminder: these are just a few components of an employment contract. If you want to make sure you’re legally covered, give me a call 250-575-3949.