This is a question which comes up a lot – and the answer depends on what the intern will be doing and for how long.
Unpaid work experience placements which are short-term are common and usually unproblematic. For example, businesses often have school age students undertake work experience. They spend a week or two shadowing employees and learning more about the business so they can decide whether or not they would like to pursue a similar career. Such placements are usually unpaid but some businesses offer expenses or modest remuneration.
If the internship is longer term and the individual is effectively doing the work of an employee, it’s worth giving more consideration to the pros and cons of paying or not.
We suggest considering the following:
Legislative changes to the employment law landscape tend not to happen too often in the UK, but like buses, this week a few seem to have arrived at once with the publication of the UK Government’s policy paper “Smarter regulation to grow the economy”, which sets out various proposals for changes to existing legislation and the introduction of new legislation.
Most employers are keen to avoid dismissing staff in whom they have invested time and money but this is not always possible.
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), sometimes referred to as “gagging clauses”, are rarely out of the news.
On 5 December 2022, following its Making Flexible Working The Default consultation, which has now concluded, the UK government announced that it will be introducing reforms to the law around employees’ rights to make flexible working requests.