It’s worth including a short reporting procedure in employment contracts in order to put positive reporting duties on employees.
Clause benefits
If you place an employee under a contractual duty to regularly report what they’re doing to their line manager, it means the manager is then able to properly supervise their work and so deal with any mistakes or problems at an early stage. It’s important though for your clause to reflect your actual practice in terms of employee supervision; there’s no point in having a clause if you don’t then require your staff to comply with it.
Clause contents
Our clause requires the employee to:
Changing reporting lines
Our clause also gives you the right to change reporting lines. This might be needed, for example, if the employee’s line manager leaves your employment or where you undergo a business reorganisation. Our clause enables the new manager to be of the same or of a different management level. Without this provision, there’s a risk that the employee might otherwise allege they’ve been demoted, which might occur where their new line manager is at a lower level in the management structure than their original line manager, and so they consider that their own status has been lowered as a result.