Reporting line and procedure clause

Rather than just including the name of the person to whom the employee will report, it can be useful to insert a more detailed clause into employment contracts.

Reporting lines

Our Written Statement of Employment Particulars includes a clause enabling you to specify the person to whom the employee will report. Given that managers move on, you might wish to set out a position/job title here rather than the name of an actual person. If, however, you want to require a bit more from the employee under their reporting line, you can use our Reporting Line and Procedure Clause. To keep things flexible for you, our clause firstly provides for an alternative manager to be appointed as the employee’s line manager from time to time - whether that’s a different person (if you named a particular person) or someone with a different job title (if you specified a job title). This could either be temporarily or permanently and our clause enables this to be a manager of the same or a different management level to their current line manager. Do be careful though to ensure that any change of line manager doesn’t result in effectively demoting the employee if they’re then required to report to a less senior person, as this could expose you to an allegation that you’ve breached the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, and the employee might resign in response and claim constructive dismissal.

Reporting procedure

Our clause then goes on to set out a reporting procedure. Including this clause in employment contracts puts positive reporting obligations on the employee, so that you’re aware of what they’re up to. This means better supervision of their work and, if necessary, more chance to deal with any mistakes at an early stage. You’ll need to ensure though that you amend our clause if necessary to reflect your actual practice in terms of employee supervision. Our clause imposes four obligations on the employee, i.e. to:

• keep their line manager informed of their activities on a continuing basis - if the employee also has specific reporting obligations, such as to produce a monthly sales report, include these in your drafting
• make themselves available to their line manager during their normal working hours to provide whatever information and assistance may reasonably be required - if you also wish to be able to contact the employee outside their working hours, for example, in an emergency, you can add this in but, if you do, use this right sparingly and only for urgent issues
• carry out their line manager’s instructions - such management instructions should be reasonable and in line with the employee’s list of job duties and responsibilities
• if required by their line manager, contact them on a daily basis at the start and end of each working day to agree work for that day and then report on progress - you won’t need to do this for all employees, but it may be useful where they require a high level of supervision, for example, because they’re a new recruit. Alternatively, you could provide for this only to apply where the employee will be working from home.