Employment status: UK employment law

Essential points

• The rights someone has at work are dependent on whether they are an employee, a worker or self-employed.
• Employment status is not clearly defined in legislation. There are definitions for tax purposes and certain legal tests, however these are different to how these employment statuses are defined and assessed for employment law purposes.
• Being clear about an individual’s employment law status is important because the different category and nature of the engagement with an organisation determines their rights and the organisation’s obligations, including tax treatment.
• The growth in the gig economy has given rise to increasing numbers of claims by ‘workers’, and the courts have grappled with determining whether an individual is a worker rather than an employee or self-employed and made clear that certain minimum rights apply to workers, such as holiday entitlement. This has occurred where some businesses have sought to structure their arrangements with people working for them as self-employed contractors; however, the individuals consider their employment status is that of a worker. This issue has been (and continues) to be tested extensively in court and examples of these cases are provided on this page.

There are two major changes proposed relating to employment status in the government's plan to Make Work Pay:

• The first is new rights for workers on zero-hours contracts to be offered guaranteed hours, which is contained in the Employment Rights Act 2025. This change is not due to take place until 2027, and the government consulted about the details of how it will work during Autumn 2025.  
• The second is a longer-term ambition to create a single status of 'worker'; this would merge the employee and worker status categories. The proposal will extend employment rights and allow two categories of engagement – worker and self-employed. There is currently no timescale for starting the consultation over this proposal.

Keep up to date with the these proposals in the plan to Make Work Pay tracker.

This page outlines the current legislation on employment status, the tests applied by tribunals and courts, and example case law. Current law should be followed until any changes come into force. We will update this page once any changes are enforced.