Guide
Employee, worker or contractor: the question the template cannot answer
Updated
Choosing a template is the second decision. The first is what the relationship actually is, and getting it wrong does not produce a document that is slightly off. It produces a document that describes something other than the arrangement it governs.
The categories
gov.uk treats worker, employee, self-employed and contractor, director and office holder as the main types of employment status, and states that status "helps determine their rights and their employer's responsibilities".
It also flags the thing that catches people out: "a person may have a different employment status in tax law". Employment law status and tax status are decided on different tests, and a relationship can genuinely be self-employed for one and not the other.
Why it decides the document
The section 1 written statement duty runs to workers and employees. A genuinely self-employed contractor is outside it, and what they need is a contract for services.
Getting this wrong in the direction of contractor is the expensive one. If the relationship is in truth worker or employee, the written statement was due on the first day and is now late, and every other right that attaches to the status applies too, regardless of what the paperwork says.
What is actually looked at
Whether the individual has to do the work personally or can genuinely send somebody else. Whether there is an obligation to offer work and to accept it. How much control the engager has over what is done, when, where and how. Whose equipment and premises are used. Who carries the financial risk of the work being done badly or late.
None of those is settled by a clause. A substitution clause that nobody has ever used, in a relationship where a substitute would obviously be refused, is evidence about the drafting rather than about the arrangement.
The practical test before you pick a template
Write down, in one paragraph, what will actually happen: who decides the hours, whether the person may decline work, whether they could send a colleague, and whose tools they use.
If that paragraph reads like an employee, the label on the contract will not change it. Resolve the status question first, then choose the document, and expect the honest answer to be more expensive and less flexible than the one you hoped for.