Continuous employment is the collective period during which an employee has worked for the same employer without a break. An individual’s period of continuous employment is significant due to the fact that once an employee attains one year's continuous employment with their employer, they become eligible for certain rights including protection against unfair dismissal and entitlement to statutory payments such as statutory redundancy pay and statutory maternity pay.

Generally, an employer’s continuous employment will be broken by a break of one clear week between two contracts of employment. However, there are certain exceptions to this such as absences due to:

• sickness or injury for a continuous period of up to 26 weeks, after which any further period of absence will not count towards the period of continuous employment (as per Article 8 of the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996);
• working arrangements agreed between the employee and their employer;
• annual leave or other types of leave such as paternity or maternity leave;
• unfair dismissal claims and subsequent reinstatement. In this scenario, the weeks between the dismissal date and the reinstatement date will be counted towards the individual’s continuous employment; and
• the employee’s participation in industrial or strike action, in which case the employee’s continuous employment is considered to be postponed. Therefore, whilst the period of time does not technically count towards continuous employment, it does not break the chain of continuous employment.

Employers should seek legal advice in any situation where an employee’s period of continuous employment is unclear so they can keep track of what rights the employee is entitled to.

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