New research from Which? Legal Service indicates that only 3 in 10 employees received an employment contract before starting the job. 9% of people didn’t get a contract until they’d been in the post for six months or more. A large number of those who did receive their contracts either skimmed through them or didn’t bother reading them at all.

I’m often asked (with disturbing regularity, in fact) why I bother. By that my conversational companion usually means why do I bother with the mission of keeping HR simple.

So, why do I bother? Because of employment contract clauses like this, that’s why:

“In this Agreement the singular shall include the plural and vice versa the masculine gender shall include both the feminine gender and the neuter gender and the feminine gender shall include both the masculine gender and the neuter gender.”