Secondary employment consent letter

Where an employee seeks your written permission for them to undertake secondary employment, use our letter where you’re willing to grant consent for that second job.

Contractual clause

Our Outside Business Interests Clause provides that an employee must not engage in any other work or activity (including self-employed activities or involvement in a spouse’s, partner’s or family business) outside their working hours, whether paid or unpaid, without the prior written permission of their line manager.

Granting permission

Assuming you have our clause, or a similar clause, requiring your permission to be sought, and the employee has complied with that clause and sought your permission, our Secondary Employment Consent Letter is for use where you’re willing to grant the appropriate consent. Do ensure you have full details of the second job from the employee though before you consider granting permission, including the name and address of the second employer (or confirmation that it’s self-employment), the type of business in which the second employer is engaged (or the nature of the self-employed activity), the type of work they’ll be undertaking (or job title) and their proposed work location and hours of work. That way you can then consider such issues as whether the second job is for a competitor or otherwise creates a conflict of interest, whether there might be a breach of the 48-hour maximum average weekly working time limit set by the Working Time Regulations 1998 or whether there might be health and safety concerns, e.g. because of the particular working hours in the second job. If there is a working time limit issue, you can ask the employee to sign an opt-out agreement (or ask them to reduce their proposed working hours with the second employer). It’s your statutory duty to “take all reasonable steps, in keeping with the need to protect the health and safety of workers” to ensure that the working time limit is complied with, and this includes where the employee has two jobs, as working time includes time worked for other employers.

Regular review

Even though our letter grants permission for the secondary employment, it does go on to provide that this will be subject to review by the employee’s line manager at least once a year, and states that if the line manager is of the reasonable opinion that the secondary employment is having an adverse impact on the employee’s performance, attendance or timekeeping with you, or on any other aspect of their employment, you reserve the right to rescind permission for them to undertake the second job. To comply with the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, do ensure you have evidence to support any later decision to rescind your permission, as rescission would then require the employee to resign from the second job.

Unenforceable provisions

Regardless of whether your clause provides an outright ban on or requires your consent to secondary employment, it will be unenforceable if it’s in the contract of a zero-hours employee, or an employee whose net average weekly wages don’t exceed the lower earnings limit.