Recruitment

Key Information

While Parishes are their own legal entity, you must still follow the safer recruitment guidance and any legislation in relation to employment law in order to recruit in a safe and legal way. We therefore recommend that you read the Recruitment and Selection Policy which you can find by clicking HERE and view the Safer Recruitment guidance on the Diocesan Safeguarding pages.

In conjunction with this, we have a recruitment and selection training presentation which will guide you in how to recruit and select candidates lawfully, which we recommend you read prior to commencing recruitment. All our recruiting managers at the DBF complete this training before recruiting for employees themselves. This will give you the information that you need in relation to employment law, safer recruiting, how to create job descriptions, shortlisting and interviewing in a lawful way, as well as guidance on the induction and probation process.

You can access this presentation by clicking HERE.

The topics covered in this presentation are:

The importance of the Recruitment & Selection Process
The Legal Aspects of recruitment
Diversity
Unconscious Bias in Recruitment
Safer Recruitment
The Job Description and Person Specification
Shortlisting
The Interview
Post Interview Process
Induction
Probation

These Recruitment and Selection Policy and the Training Presentation will guide you in the use of the template documents detailed below. If you have any questions, please contact the HR Manager Simone Smith.

Employment status

Before embarking on recruitment, you should establish the employment status of the role you are recruiting for. Not everyone is considered an employee, some are self-employed, some are casual workers etc. There are 3 main types of employment status under employment law (Employment Rights Act 1996):

Worker (See IR35 below)
employee
self-employed

To understand what each of these status’ means, click HERE to visit the ACAS website which explains this in detail.

If you want to determine whether the role you are recruiting is for an employee, worker or self-employed, then you can use the HMRC checker to do this at this link HMRC Checker. You may wish to take a screen print of the result and save it on the person's personnel record in case you ever need to show it to HMRC in future. Providing that the answers you put into the checker are correct, then HMRC will uphold the result you were initial given.

If you are taking on someone on a self employed basis, or even a contractor who trades as a company, you can create a written contract between you both so each side of the arrangement understands what is expected and what the pay rate will be etc. Below are 2 documents that you may wish to adapt and use to suit your needs.

IR35 (Off Payroll working)

Where you are employing a contractor to work for you (also known as a “Worker”), you will need to understand the IR35 rules. These off-payroll working rules make sure that a worker pays broadly the same Income Tax and National Insurance as an employee would. The rules apply if the worker who provides services to a client through their own intermediary would have been an employee if they were providing their services directly to that client. The key thing to note is that if your employee acts like an employee and is treated like one, then they are an employee for income tax and national insurances purposes. There are lots of grey areas however, so you should always seek advice if needed. You will need to assess each of your contractors to check whether they fall inside (employee) or outside (worker) these rules for IR35. The penalty for failing to do this, are that your organisation (the end hirer) would be liable to pay the employee/contractors income tax and national insurance, plus a large penalty on top. There are exemptions for small businesses, however you should still ensure you understand the IR35 rules. Click HERE to read more about IR35 and how it might affect your organisation.

Volunteers

If you are recruiting for Volunteer roles, then there are also things you need to provide, such as an offer letter/volunteer agreement and job description, and you still need to do the safer recruitment checks and DBS checks if required. The volunteer also should be treated properly in accordance with your anti-discrimination and health and safety policies. While Volunteers are unpaid workers, you will need to ensure that there is no cross-over between volunteering and employment. Volunteers are not covered under section 44 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 as long as they are volunteering with you under the rules stated there. Click HERE to see those rules. You must be careful to abide by this or the volunteer may actually be deemed to be an employee in law.

Setting up as an employer

All employment status' are covered by various pieces of employment legislation and you will need to understand your obligations for each one. The government has a website where you can check this by following a step-by-step process to ascertain the legal status of the person. Please click HERE to be taken to their website.

If you are setting up as an employer for the first time these two links will guide you in how to register as an employer for PAYE including how to process payroll, including paying over any Income tax and National Insurance amounts to HMRC, and how to Set up a Workplace Pension Scheme and will explain all the rules on which employees qualify for a workplace pension.

When you are looking at pay for your new role, you must remember to consider that you are legally bound to pay at least the National Minimum Wage, however in the Coventry Diocese we do have a commitment to work towards paying the Real Living Wage to all employees which is currently £12 per hour. You can access the current guidelines for the national minimum wage HERE and the guidelines for the Real Living Wage HERE.

If you wish to post an advert on our Diocesan Vacancy website, please send a copy of the advert and job description, plus your own application form and any other information you wish to be included on the application to ParishHR@Coventry.Anglican.org

Safer Recruitment

You should ensure that you have read through the safer recruitmentment guidance prior to recruiting. This can be found on the Diocesan Safeguarding page by clicking HERE

You can also sign up to the Safeguarding Hub to help you keep track of DBS checks and Safeguarding training for your staff and during recruitment by clicking HERE

Template Documents that you can download, adapt and use (Click on each link):

Disclaimer: These templates are provided to help you and are based on good practice detailed by the Cipd and ACAS which are the professional bodies in relation to Employment Law matters. We use these templates at the DBF however we accept no liability for your use or amendment of these.