How Can I Change Employment Contracts in England?

Employment contracts form the legal agreement between you and your employee regarding their job role. However, there may be times when you need to change the terms and conditions of your employees’ employment. If you want to change employment contracts, you must follow a proper process. Otherwise, the changes you make might not have any legal force and cause repercussions for you and your staff. Hence, this article explains what you, as an employer, need to know about making employment contract changes for your employees in England.

Consider What Needs To Change in the Employment Contract

If changes to your employment contracts are necessary, you must consider what needs to be changed. For example, you may need to change your employee’s duties as part of their role. 

You also need to consider if an employment contract change is the only way to achieve your aim. For example, if you are trying to reduce outgoings for your business, there may be other ways to go about this rather than making contractual changes, such as reducing your staff’s working hours. 

Propose Your Employment Contract Changes

Once you are sure you want to make employment contract changes, you should inform your affected staff. Additionally, if your workplace has a collective agreement in place, you must inform your employee’s representatives, such as trade union officials. If you fail to inform all the relevant workers and employees about the changes, you may be committing illegal discrimination.

When proposing your employment contract changes, there is certain information you should include. This information includes:

• details about what may change;
• who the change affects;
• your reasons for making the change;
• when the change takes effect; and
• what other options you have investigated.

You should communicate the proposed changes clearly and as soon as possible. However, you should also consider how you will inform your staff. For example, you might communicate small changes in person, whereas larger changes may need to be in writing.

Consult Your Employees About the Changes

Once you have informed the affected employees and relevant representatives, you must engage in proper consultation. Consultation involves two-way discussions with those affected. This allows affected employees to ask questions and signal potential disagreement about the change.

Effective consultation can help you gain your employees’ consent to the changes. Additionally, it can also help maintain good working relationships with your staff. If you do not engage in effective consultation, you could face repercussions such as stressed employees or industrial action. 

Once You Reach an Agreement

Once you have consulted your employees about employment contract changes and these are agreed upon with your staff, you need to do the following. 

1. State the Changes in Writing

Stating the changes to employment contracts in writing helps clarify what has changed. You should give your employees a copy of the change and agree to it once they have no concerns. Additionally, some changes need to be in your employees’ written statements of particulars, such as where they involve job pay and hours.

2. Ensure the Changes Are Clear

You must ensure your staff are clear about the changes. Otherwise, this can produce great uncertainty in the workplace. 

Making sure your staff are clear about the changes may depend on how many staff are affected and where they work in your business. Nevertheless, your employees’ representatives might assist with this if they were part of the proposals and consultation process.

3. Monitor the Changes

You should continue monitoring the changes once they are in place to ensure they are working effectively. How long you should monitor the changes depends on the nature of the changes.

Key Takeaways

You must go through a specific process if you change anything in your employees’ employment contracts. This will help you get the agreement you need from those affected by the changes. To make employment contract changes, you should consult effectively with affected staff. You should also consider involving your employees’ representatives in the process where a collective agreement covers the area of change.

If you need help understanding how to make employment contract changes for your employees in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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