Employers often consider their contracts of employment and staff handbook as a compliance matter. It is easy to find cheap or free templates on the internet or to “borrow” contracts from other sources.

What employers do not realise is that the answer to many of their employment law queries will be dictated by the content of their contracts of employment and the policies in their staff handbook. For example:

• I do not believe this employee is genuinely off sick, can I pay her SSP?
• I have paid expensive training for an employee who just gave me their resignation, can I claw back the cost of the training?
• An ex employee has set up in competition selling a software which is very similar to our own, what can I do about it?
• Do you have to pay commissions to an employee who left for the competition?

The contracts of employment and staff handbooks we draft are not cheap at the start but they can save you a lot of time and money when dealing with day to day issues or at the end of the relationship.