Employment Contracts and Employee Handbook
Protect Your Business and Set Clear Expectations from Day One
Employment contracts and an employee handbook aren’t just paperwork – they are essential tools to protect your business and create a positive, structured workplace. Without them, you risk legal trouble, costly disputes, and employees taking advantage of loopholes that could harm your bottom line.
Running a business without proper employment contracts and policies is like playing a game with no rules. Here’s why getting these documents in place is crucial:
Stay Legally Compliant – Employment contracts should include your statement of particulars to ensure compliance.
Protect Your Clients & Business Interests – Prevent employees from leaving and taking your clients with them by setting clear post-employment restrictions.
Avoid Costly Loopholes – Ensure policies prevent employees from manipulating working hours, abusing sick pay, or claiming unnecessary overtime.
Set Clear Expectations – Define what is expected in terms of performance, absence management, and workplace behaviour.
Ensure Brand Representation – Reinforce company values and standards, from dress codes to customer interactions.
Support Neurodivergent Employees – Clear and structured communication helps create an inclusive and supportive workplace for all employees.
Equip Your Managers – Give your management team the tools they need to handle employee issues effectively and fairly.
How Our Employment Contracts & Employee Handbook Help
Our expertly written documents provide everything you need to protect and grow your business:
✅ Compliant & Up-to-Date – We ensure your contracts meet the latest employment laws and best practices.
✅ Tailored for Your Business – Designed to reflect your company’s unique needs, industry standards, and values.
✅ Prevents Future Headaches – Anticipate and address issues before they arise, such as defining sick pay limits and managing performance concerns.
✅ Improves Recruitment & Retention – Professional, well-structured documents signal to potential hires that your business is well-organised and committed to employee success.
✅ Clarity & Confidence – Employees know what is expected, reducing disputes and misunderstandings that can lead to workplace tension.
Our HR Documentation Packages
If you're looking for documents and on-going advice, our HR Advice Plus™ package includes both.
Audit
Review and update your existing documents:
- Ensure they're legally up to date
- Make best practice recommendations
- Video call to discuss your needs and our recommendations
- Work completed by CIPD qualified HR consultant
- Final documents in editable Word format
Bronze
£49
Download our legally compliant HR documentation:
- Employment Contract (Statement of Particulars)
- HR Policies, covering the essentials like sick reporting and statutory minimum time off
- All documents available to immediately download, for you to print yourself
Price excludes VAT
Silver
£1,350
Bespoke documentation to suit the needs of your business. Includes:
- Initial telephone call to get to know your business
- Bespoke Employee Handbook, covering all the HR policies you need to protect your business
- Employment Contract (Statement of Particulars) templates bespoke to your business
- Guidance and template letters for issuing new contracts to employees
- Documents provided in electronic format (e.g. Word/Google docs) for you to print yourself
Gold
£2,750
Our Gold package goes beyond legal compliance and protecting your business. With this package we really get to know what you need from your employees. We’ll document not only your policies and procedures but also your culture, brand and expectations of your team. Includes:
- Initial call to get to know your business and your requirements for documents
- Bespoke Employee Handbook/ Culture Book/ Operations Bible - call it what you want we’ll make sure it’s exactly what you need!
- Employment Contract (Statement of Particulars) templates designed to protect your business
- Hand holding as you issue new contracts to your employees
- A video call with your management team or all your employees (whichever is right for your business) to introduce them to the new documentation, explain why and answer any questions they may have
- A bespoke recorded video, with your branding, for you to use when onboarding new employees
- Documents that create a solid foundation for you to drive performance and business growth
- Perfectly presented documents suited to your business. Whether you want a branded ebook, posters with key information or upload to your wiki our graphic designers are on hand to make sure your documents look the part
All prices are exclusive of VAT.
Jennifer [sic] put together my new contracts and handbooks for my business, she was so efficient and gave me lots of advice along the way. Highly recommend!
How do employment contracts protect my business?
- Protecting you from employment tribunals.
- Avoiding disputes with your team by making clear the terms, conditions and rules right from the beginning of employment.
- Allowing you to deduct from wages for loss or damage to company property, overpayments and if someone leaves employment when you’ve invested in training.
- Social media policy, setting out the expectations on social media to protect your brand image. Ensuring you have the rules and procedures in place to deal with issues if they happen.
- Sickness absence policy, giving you the tools and procedures to reduce sickness absence.
What happens when I buy an Employment Contracts package?
Once you’ve decided you want us to write your employment contracts, we’ll book a video call at a time convenient for you. During this call we’ll gather everything we need to write your documents. After this we draft your documents, giving you everything you need to protect your business.
Once the documents are drafted and you’re completely happy with the wording we’ll provide all the support you need to issue contracts to your existing team.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Who are Silk Helix?
Silk Helix are a HR Consultancy founded by Jenefer Livings in 2019. Jenefer has nearly 20 years experience in HR, much of that supporting small businesses in a variety of industries. It’s this experience that ensures you have contracts that fit exactly with your business.
What is a legally compliant employment contract?
There is a list of information you must provide to employees by the end of their first day, known as statement of particulars - however, this whilst being key terms of employment isn’t the full employment contract. This is a minimum legal requirement to provide information to a worker, as required by The Employment Rights Act 1996. We recommend you have a comprehensive written contract covering all the rights and responsibilities of both employer and employee.
What is an Employee Handbook?
An employee handbook is your rules and expectations, it’s non-contractual which allows you to update it as business needs change. It ensures employees know the rules, with them being all in one place there is no argument “I didn’t know that existed”. Should you need to dismiss for gross misconduct this will help ensure a fair dismissal. Primarily, by ensuring people know the expectations they’re much more likely to meet them.
What is the benefit of bespoke documents?
When contracts and a handbook are written bespoke they reflect your culture, your values , your expectations. Simple things like a holiday policy can vary, some have Christmas shut down, some close on bank holidays whilst others are busier, some require 12 weeks notice of holiday whilst others are happy with 2 weeks. This is just some variations in one policy. We talk through every aspect of your requirements of employees to ensure your contracts and handbook reflect exactly what you need.
In addition, some things need to be covered in separate documents, restrictive covenants and training agreements to name just two - if you need these we’ll provide these as part of your package.