Reporting procedure

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:

• keep their line manager informed of their work-related activities on a continual basis - if the employee has any specific reporting obligations, such as to produce a monthly sales report, you can add them here
• make themselves available at reasonable times during their working hours to provide whatever information and assistance may reasonably be required of them
• allow their line manager to contact them outside working hours in an emergency or where the matter is urgent - note that this doesn’t mean you can contact the employee whenever you like outside their working hours; constantly harassing an employee on non-urgent issues outside working hours could give rise to a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence
• carry out their line manager’s lawful management instructions.

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.