Continuous employment is, as it sounds, when an employee works for an employer without a break.
Some employment rights depend on the length of your continuous employment, including:
- Maternity pay.
- Flexible working requests.
- Redundancy pay.
Your period of continuous employment begins on your first day of work.
Some breaks in normal employment still count towards your continuous employment period:
- Sickness, maternity, paternity, parental or adoption leave.
- Annual leave.
- Employment overseas with the same company.
- Time between you being unfairly dismissed and reinstated.
- When you move between associated employers.
- Military service, for example with a reserve force.
- Temporary lay-offs.
- Employer lock-outs.
- When a business is transferred from one employer to another.
- When a corporate body is taken over by another because of a legal change.
Any days which you spend on strike do not count towards your continuous employment, but nor are they treated as a break.