Check your employment status

It is important that you find out what your employment status is and understand how it affects your rights. 

There are 3 employment statuses:

• employee
• worker
• self-employed

You only have employment rights if you’re an employee or a worker.

An employer might try to call you ‘self-employed’ when you’re actually an employee or worker. Employers sometimes do this to take away their employees’ employment rights. 

If you think your employer has done this you can:

• raise a grievance based on what you think your status is 

• take your employer to an employment tribunal

Check if you’re an employee

You’re an employee if:

• your employer is in charge of what work you do and how you should go about it on a day to day basis (even if you’re left alone to actually do the work) 
• under your contract you have to do the work yourself - you can’t pass it onto someone else
• your contract guarantees you a specific amount of work - and you have to do it

Check if you’re a worker

You’re a worker if:

• under your contract you have to do the work you’re given yourself - you can’t pass it on to someone else
• your employer isn’t a client or customer of a business that you run

If you’re an agency worker

If you’re working through an agency, you will usually be a worker for the agency. This means you’ll:

• be sent to do work for another business, which is a client of the agency

• only have a contract with the agency - not the business where you’re working

You can read more about:

• agency workers – what you need to know
• additional rights for agency workers