Offering a legal employment contract

Picture yourself in a supermarket in England or Wales (not to exclude Scotland and Northern Ireland, but it is particularly relevant to the wider topic beyond what we’re discussing this month).

You’ve gone in to buy your weekly shop, including cereal as one of the essential fuels needed to get you going in the mornings.

You find it priced at ￡2.75 on a shelf in the right aisle and perhaps roll your eyes at how the price has gone up.

Without realising it, you have just engaged in the first of four stages of how the law of contract in England and Wales works. It is called an “offer”.

The cereal is there and the price has been given to you.??You can take it or leave it. It is entirely your choice.

This process also applies in employment law in England and Wales, specifically when you are giving someone a contract of employment for the first time or you are changing their contract at a later date, although it is tweaked slightly.? After all, job offers don’t sit waiting on supermarket shelves!

This video explains the process in a bit more detail:-

YouTube Video - Step 1: Make an offer in an employment contract

When you’re recruiting for a position, there will be several aspects of the process that contribute to the offer of employment:-

1. The way that the role is advertised or made known to candidates.
2. The interview process and what comes of those discussions.
3. The letter offering the role to the successful candidate.
4. The actual employment contract that is being offered to the successful candidate.

The first two of these steps play their part in the overall offer.

However, it is important to remember that the first step is a general invitation to all who wish to apply for a role, rather than being a specific offer tailored to a person who you can actually name.??

Meanwhile, the second step is equivalent to a chat to explore things further, where both sides still have the freedom to say “No, thank you” (not that you necessarily have the chance to negotiate the price of the cereal in the supermarket).

The third and fourth steps are far more targeted towards one specific person and therefore hold greater strength in the offer for employment law purposes, as documents will be sent to a specific person: the successful candidate (and, depending on the circumstances, it might be best to send the offer and the contract at the same time).

Just as the person shopping down the aisle in the supermarket sees the offer of the cereal on a shelf for a price, the successful candidate receives the offer of employment that has been tailored to them at a specific moment, when other candidates have stepped away from the process, for whatever reason.

It is a very similar principle when an employment contract is being changed, except that certain parts of the process may well be tweaked, and all of the parts are likely to be crucial to the offer process, because they will be aimed at someone who is already known to the employer from the very beginning (i.e. as their employee).

For example:-

1. The job advertisement may well be changed to emails and/or letters about a promotion or a consultation to suggest changing aspects of the employee’s role.
2. The interview process may become one of a series of discussions with the employee or someone appointed to act on their behalf (such as an employee elected to represent their colleagues or a trade union representative representing many employees).
3. The offer letter may be similar to a recruitment process, but might include more detail around the discussions that have taken place, why the changes have been proposed, and what has been agreed.
4. The employment contract naturally will have changed compared to the original version, but will still be fundamental to the offer.

Whilst all of this is much more involved than simply going to the supermarket to buy some cereal (and I hope I haven’t caused you to overthink your shopping experience in any of this), it’s important to remember that the offer of employment is a crucial stage in making a legally binding employment contract in England and Wales, or changing an existing employment contract.

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