Can anyone help here… Our business often does work placements for students and we normally do it quite informally, just paying an amount to cover reasonable expenses (as they are with us for less than a year and the placement is part of their studies they don’t qualify for NMW, although we do pay around that figure).

Anyway, we have just offered someone a placement and she has been asked by her Placements Officer at Uni to question us, saying we are treating her as a freelancer rather than an employee.

However:

1 – she wouldn’t be an employee/intern as there is no guarantee of a job (as she still has to finish her final year of studies after her time with us anyway).

2 – we have stated that she reserves the right to not come in (obviously not get paid though) and to refuse to do any work that she doesn’t want to do. She can also spend reasonable time working on her own projects and get help and advice from our team.

I find it is a bit of a grey area – we aren’t saying ‘we’ll pay you a very small salary but we expect you to do every reasonable task we tell you to perform’, what we are saying is ‘come in, we’ll give you some financial support but you are only here to gain experience in a working environment and contribute where you want – we don’t have expectations on how valuable you will be to the business’.

I have read various articles on the Gov.UK site and the ACAS site but it all seems quite wooly about what to do and that the advice could be interpreted in different ways.

My business has done work placements of a very similar type before. It sounds like the prospective student / Placement Officer is a little confused about exactly what is being offered. As you say, she will be treated as a short term work placement student there to get some ‘real life’ experience, not an employee or freelancer. I assume you have some sort of agreement or paperwork required by the university with regards to the placement. If so, then that’s all that is needed. There certainly won’t be an employment contract involved as no one is being employed. You’ll probably need to speak to the person at the university who is in charge of the placement programme.

There certainly won’t be an employment contract involved as no one is being employed.

Are you sure about that? It sounds to me like many of the criteria of an employment agreement probably exist. You’d probably be well advised to get legal advice.

she wouldn’t be an employee/intern as there is no guarantee of a job (as she still has to finish her final year of studies after her time with us anyway).

But she is for the fixed term of the post. There is no reason why someone can’t be an employee for a pre-agreed period of time.

we have stated that she reserves the right to not come in (obviously not get paid though) and to refuse to do any work that she doesn’t want to do… …what we are saying is ‘come in, we’ll give you some financial support but you are only here to gain experience in a working environment and contribute where you want’.

the first and last parts of that quote seem to contradict each other. I’ve hired people who have done both structured and informal placements as you describe. Without doubt the former have a much better idea how the real world works – you’ll help her more if you treat her like an actual employee.

Are you sure about that? It sounds to me like many of the criteria of an employment agreement probably exist. You’d probably be well advised to get legal advice.

That’s why I asked about the agreement in place with the university. In my experience the placement students remained enrolled at the university and the university retained control of the process. That is to say that they put forward suitable candidates, and in the case of problems arising, university protocols kicked in rather than company ones. We did take legal advice and nothing different was said, although I obviously accept that the OP’s situation might well be different.
In my case the expectation of ‘gaining real world experience’ was very much to do with the real life running of the industry (as opposed to the academic knowledge taught on the degree course) rather than the 9 to 5 grind. 🙂