Continuous employment

Continuous employment is when an employee has worked for one employer without a break.

The length of continuous employment gives certain rights to employees, including:

• maternity pay
• flexible working requests
• redundancy pay

Continuous employment is calculated from the first day of work.

What’s included

Some breaks in normal employment still count towards a continuous employment period. These are:

• sickness, maternity, paternity, parental or adoption leave
• annual leave
• employment overseas with the same company
• time between unfair dismissal and an employee being reinstated
• when an employee moves between associated employers
• military service, for example with a reserve force
• temporary lay-offs
• employer lockouts
• when a business is transferred from one employer to another
• when a corporate body gets taken over by another because of a legal change

Strikes

Days when employees are on strike do not count towards continuous employment, but this is not treated as a break.

Example

An employee works for 20 days, but for 5 of these days the employee is on strike – this only counts as 15 days’ continuous employment.

Helpline

Contact the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) if you have any questions about continuous employment.