The skeleton of an offer letter can be found elsewhere in this Guide (specimen documents). This will need to be modified to meet the requirements of the company and the circumstances of the individual applicant.
A contract of employment is formed as soon as the successful candidate accepts the offer of the job. Two important legal points arise from this:
- If a job offer is intended to be conditional on certain conditions being met, such as the receipt of satisfactory references, medical reports, security clearance or proof of the right to work in the UK, then the company must make that clear when the offer is made.
- The job offer must set out, or make reference to, all the contractual terms that an applicant is being asked to accept. Ideally, therefore, all the documents that contain terms that the company intends to be binding on the employee, such as details of benefit schemes or collective agreements, should be sent to the applicant at the time the offer is made (incorporating terms ). In practice, where a large number of collective agreements apply, employers may choose merely to list the agreements and their subject matter.
If the candidate is sent a document, such as an employee handbook, that contains some terms that are intended to be part of employees' contracts but other terms that are not, care should be taken to point out which terms are contractual. The company may, for example, wish its disciplinary procedure not to be contractual, so that it has freedom to alter it in line with operational or legislative developments.
A company may need to act swiftly to secure a successful candidate, and so may decide to make the initial offer by telephone, in order to find out whether the candidate is in principle interested in accepting. If so, it is important to make clear that the full terms of the offer will be set out in writing.
The applicant may simply accept the offer as it stands. On the other hand, he or she may want to discuss the terms of the offer or may accept the offer but subject to his or her own conditions, such as receiving assurances about salary reviews. If so, these issues should be dealt with promptly, and in any event before the applicant starts work, in order to clarify and confirm unconditionally the terms on which the applicant is being recruited.
A job offer cannot be withdrawn once the applicant has accepted it - that is, once the applicant sends or orally communicates his or her unconditional acceptance of the offer. If the applicant accepts the offer, he or she has a contract of employment and the company must then give the employee proper notice of termination if it wishes to withdraw from the contract, even if the employee has not yet started work. If the company decides to withdraw from the contract for discriminatory or inadmissible reasons (automatically unfair reasons for dismissal ) (the reason for the dismissal), then it will be liable for discrimination or unfair dismissal.
In accepting a job offer, an applicant may be acting in breach of contractual obligations towards his or her existing employer by, for example, leaving without giving proper notice of resignation, or acting in breach of some form of restriction on his or her subsequent employment. If the recruiting company knows this but deliberately induces a breach, it should be aware that it could be liable to pay the applicant's existing employer compensation for inducing the applicant to breach his or her contract.