Job offer cover letter

If you want to make a job offer in writing but intend to attach the written statement of employment particulars or employment contract to that offer, you can use our letter.

Statutory requirements

The Employment Rights Act 1996 states that you must provide all employees (and workers) with a written statement of employment particulars no later than the beginning of their employment (or engagement), and this must include a list of mandatory information - see our Written Statement of Employment Particulars. Some employers go further than this and provide a more detailed employment contract, normally containing a number of additional employer-protective provisions, such as clauses governing garden leave, pay in lieu of notice and confidentiality. In practice, as a minimum, you must give the employee a written statement on or before their first day of work (although some limited information can be provided in supplementary instalments no later than two months after the start of their employment).

Upfront documentation

On recruitment, when offering a role to your successful candidate, you therefore might decide that, rather than sending out a detailed job offer letter and then providing the written statement or employment contract at a later date, you’re instead going to send out a more basic cover letter which attaches the statement/contract upfront. This is the purpose of our Job Offer Cover Letter. It’s based on our Offer of Appointment Letter but, unlike that letter, it doesn’t include details of the key terms of the role or any probationary period, as those are left to be set out in the attached statement/contract. What is does keep in though are all the conditions of the offer and the pre-employment checks that are to be carried out, e.g. references and proof of right to work in the UK, as those won’t usually be covered in the statement/contract. It also asks the candidate to sign and return the duplicate copies of both the letter and statement/contract to accept the terms of the job offer – make sure you include two copies of both. You might also want to send them a copy of your staff handbook if any of that is contractual. That way, the candidate knows all the contractual terms that they’re being asked to agree to before they accept your offer of employment, and it allows queries to be raised at an early stage.