I’m looking for a policy which incorporates casual hour contracts without being horrendous in how it is written.
I have started a new role at Horse and Bamboo and have looked over an old contract tmplate to send to a new casual duty manager for our bar. it is very out of date and is worded in a way that isn’t hugely welcoming, even though we really are welcoming!
does anyone have a contract for casual hours/zero hours that still describes the person as an employee, has up tp date sick pay information included after the changes made by labour?
Our ultimate goal is to not have these contracts at all, but we currently don’t have enough confirmed hours to be able to guarantee for people, but we do want to move away from this model.
Thanks for sharing the question, @katehammon - it’s an important one! Zero hours contracts can obviously be crap for a range of reasons, but there are also various optionals that can make them less-bad for workers. This doesn’t offer a template, as our work with freelancers doing piecemeal bits of work at RadHR would likely be quite different to a duty manager in a bar, but we have tried to build in things like: offering payment if we have to cancel work at short notice, being flexible in how and when we pay freelance workers their wages, and making clear that we take on more liability for things that go wrong while they are working with us, than we expect we expect them to, as individuals.
I also realise this doesn’t help with any of the specific changes that Labour have recently introduced, but maybe @Abbie_PeopleSupport will know if there are any good summaries to include on this front?
If you are able to produce something, we’d definitely be keen to have it in the policy library, as it’s not something there are enough good examples of out there!
Hi @katehammon and @liam Sorry for the long delay in replying, it’s been a particularly busy couple of weeks.
We help organisations to draw up contracts, including for zero or flexible hours, but I don’t have a template as such to share unfortunately - they’re all tailored to the specifics of the organisations. You can find a basic template here: Written statement template: employee | Acas to work from. It includes the main points that are legally required, and it gives you scope to write the contract in a friendlier way with straightforward, accessible language.
A resource we’ve drawn on a lot is Contracting Between the Rules, which has an example employment contract. If you look at this with the Acas information that should give you a very good starting point.
In terms of recent and upcoming changes from the Employment Rights Act, it’s a good idea to include a statement along the lines of “You have the right to join a Trade Union of your choice”.
The details are not yet finalised for guaranteed working hours, compensation if a shift is cancelled, shortened or moved to another time, or reasonable notice of shifts and changes to shifts. These changes are expected later in 2027. For now you could say something like “We will give you as much notice as possible if we need to rearrange or cancel a shift, and we will comply with out statutory obligations for any shift that is cancelled or rearranged at short notice.” Or you could work out something now for payments for short notice cancellations etc and include that.
Thank you both so much! I really appreciate the replies, sorry it’s taken a while to reply, the notifications went to my spam (now sorted).
I put something together for the new worker but when I have properly overhauled the contracts and handbook I am happy to share
Thank you again, RadHr has been an amazing find!
