How to Write: Letter Confirming Employment
Employer Writing Employment Letter: Limit Information Offered
Employers are asked to provide letters confirming employment by employees for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes employees may need a letter to fulfill educational requirements. Letters of employment are commonly required by employees who wish to lease or rent properties or take out a mortgage. Letters of employment may be requested by other lenders, including auto financing companies, credit card companies and other consumer credit companies. Insurance companies may ask for letters of employment as well. Professional associations and licensing authorities may also ask for letters of employment.
The key to writing the best employment letter is to understand why the employee needs it. Why is someone asking an employee to confirm their status with your business? A balance must be struck between providing an important service that provides legitimate utility to employees and revealing too much information about a company's business practices, salaries, benefits and other sensitive areas.
Create and Store Standard Employment Letter Templates
Creating and storing standard letter of employment templates is a good business practice. This ensures that supervisors, managers and human resources personnel follow a pre-determined framework when revealing details about the employment contracts of workers. This reduces risk not only to the employee, with regard to outsiders gaining too much information about them, but also reduces risk to the company issuing the letter of employment.
Further, business managers and supervisors are well-advised to educate employees about different types of information that may or may not be included in a letter of employment and why certain elements are not necessary for some applications. Adding or removing specific elements to a letter of employment based on employee requests should be considered on a case-by-case basis and always accompanied by efforts to educate employees and make them aware of their rights.
Key Elements: Letter of Employment Confirmation
Important information that is part of almost all letters of employment includes: the date; the name and address of the business; a subject line; a general salutation; text confirming an employee's position; the employee's hire date; the employee's salary; the employee's bonuses and commissions; the employee's pay schedule; the employee's status as full or part time; and the number of hours the employee works per week. The letter is then closed with the name, position and contact information of the person writing the it.
It is important to note that letters of employment should only be issued with the express consent of the employee with whom they deal. Businesses should not issue letters of employment when asked by any third party without the express written consent of their employee. Requests for letters of employment received from anyone but the employee they concern, should be treated with a great deal of suspicion. Soliciting signed letters of direction from employees with regard to the issuing of letters of employment and the details contained therein is a good, common sense business practice, protecting both the employer and the employee.
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