If you want to start your own wedding planning business or expand your existing one, you should carefully consider your employment contracts. As a wedding planner, you work in a very fluid environment and deal with many moving parts. As such, your employment contracts must ensure that your employees know precisely what you require from them. Additionally, your employment contracts can protect your business from unwanted liability by defining precisely what is expected of each employee. Hence, this article will take you through what wedding planners need to include in their employment contracts.
Where Do I Begin With Creating My Employment Contracts?
On the one hand, employment contracts should be specific enough to ensure that your employees complete all their tasks. On the other hand, employment contracts should be flexible enough to allow your employees to adapt to the fluid environment. An excellent place to start by looking at your business model.
Employment contracts form the basis for your business functions. As such, you should create a model for your company that outline the roles and responsibilities of each position. Consequently, you will have a basic outline of what you need to include in your employment contracts for each position.
You should clearly define your employee’s responsibilities. This way, no employee can engage in an activity beyond their capability or qualification. This will protect you and your business from incurring any financial or legal liability. In addition, it will protect your business’ reputation by ensuring that your employees’ work is only of the highest standard.
What Should Be in My Employment Contracts as a Wedding Planner?
An aspect of employment contracts that is unique to the wedding planning business is how your employees are expected to behave with customers. Wedding planners often interact with customers under a great deal of stress.
Hence, as the owner of a wedding planning business, it is your responsibility to ensure that your employees behave appropriately in situations where they are blamed for errors. The most effective way to do this is to create a standard of behaviour expected of your employees when dealing with customers. This will ensure that, in the event of a crisis, they respond with empathy.
However, you should also ensure that you protect your employees from aggressive clients. For example, you may have a complaint system that allows employees to report any negative incidents directly to their manager and ask to be reassigned.
Continue reading this article below the formGeneral Employment Contracts
In addition to industry-specific policies, your employment contracts must include the standard information in employment contracts. For example, your employment contract should set out the general terms and conditions of employment in line with the National Employment Standards (NES).
The NES set out 11 minimum workplace entitlements which touch upon:
- working arrangements;
- leave entitlements;
- termination;
- redundancy; and
- access to information.
As an employer, you must familiarise yourself with the NES and ensure these standards are implemented in your employment contracts.
Post-Employment Provisions
Anti-competition and confidentiality clauses are of particular value for wedding planning businesses that primarily rely on relationships with third parties. Although employees automatically have common law obligations around confidentiality, it is much easier to include such provisions in employment contracts than relying on these common law obligations.
For example, you may include a confidentiality clause that prevents former employees from:
- soliciting your vendors upon the end of their employment; or
- starting a wedding planning business in the same suburb for a certain period following their employment with you.
As an employer, understand your essential employment obligations with this free LegalVision factsheet.
Key Takeaways
As the owner of a wedding planner business, you must place a great deal of thought into the contents of each of your employment contracts. This will ensure that your:
- employees know what is required of them at all times;
- business is protected from liability; and
- workplace is safe and productive.
If you need assistance preparing employment contracts for your wedding planning business, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 1300 544 755 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Employment contracts should first set out the general terms and conditions of employment in line with the National Employment Standards (NES). This includes provisions relating to working arrangements, leave entitlements and termination. When developing an employment contract, it can also be helpful to look at your business model, including the roles and responsibilities of each position within your business and prepare your employment contracts for each position.
As a wedding planner, you should include specific provisions in your employment contracts that outline the expected behaviour of employees with customers. This may include developing a code of conduct. You should also ensure that your employees are protected from aggressive clients and include provisions that will allow them to be replaced if they feel mistreated. Further, anti-competition and confidentiality clauses are of particular value for wedding planning businesses, which primarily rely on relationships with third parties. As such, this should be accounted for in your employment contracts.
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