Employment status checker: employee, worker or self-employed?

Called self-employed but working their rota, at their rate, under their instructions? The label does not settle your rights. Employees and workers can be owed minimum wage and paid holiday even when the firm asks for invoices.

Answer eight short questions about one paid working relationship. This checker suggests whether it looks more like employment, limb (b) worker status or genuine self-employment. Mixed answers may need a closer check. It is a guide for England, Wales and Scotland, not a ruling, legal advice or a tax assessment. Your answers stay in your browser, with no storage, tracking or external requests.

How this works

The starting point is section 230 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. An employee works under a contract of employment. A limb (b) worker personally provides work or services for someone who is not a client or customer of the worker’s own business. Employees are workers too; “limb (b)” means a worker who is not an employee.

There is no legal points score. The checker follows cautious combinations of indicators, not a probability or a tribunal test you can pass. Strong staff-like answers with ongoing obligations on both sides point towards employee status. Personal work with company control or dependence can point towards worker status even without guaranteed future shifts. Independently organising the work, setting prices for clients and bearing genuine business risk point towards self-employment. A genuine client relationship can remain self-employment even where you do the work personally.

Conflicting answers, uncertain personal service or work through an intermediary such as your own company, an agency or an umbrella leave the result unclear: the checker does not classify those chains. No single answer proves status. The form does not decide who your employer is, continuous service, how much you are owed or whether a claim will succeed. A tribunal considers the whole real relationship and the legal test for the particular right claimed, not just what the contract says.

1. Personal service and substitution. Must you do the work yourself? A manager finding shift cover is not the same as your right to arrange and pay a substitute. A genuine unrestricted right can matter even if unused. Limited substitution or a paper-only clause needs closer examination.
2. Control. Who sets the hours, jobs, method and instructions? Include app restrictions and penalties, not just a supervisor standing over you.
3. Mutuality of obligation. What work or pay must the firm provide, and what must you accept and perform? No promise of another shift does not remove worker rights during work done. Employee status may also arise for an individual assignment.
4. Integration. Are you part of the firm’s staff and service, or does it buy from your independent business? Look at customers, equipment and organisation together. One client alone proves little.
5. Financial risk and pay. Can you price a job, make a profit or business loss, and have to correct faulty work at your own expense? Losing a shift or buying a uniform alone does not make you a business. Hourly pay, salary, invoices and payment frequency do not settle status.
6. Agency and umbrella arrangements. Identify every organisation in the chain. The agency or umbrella and the workplace hirer are not interchangeable. A standard umbrella employs you and pays wages. Conflicting paperwork needs advice, not an assumption that the hirer is your employer.

The cases behind the questions

In Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5, the Supreme Court found that the drivers were workers. Uber set fares and contract terms, constrained acceptance of trips, controlled the service and restricted driver-passenger contact. Those control features mattered; being described as self-employed did not settle the question.

In Pimlico Plumbers Ltd v Smith [2018] UKSC 29, a plumber labelled self-employed had a substitution right limited to another Pimlico operative. That did not defeat personal service. He was a worker, and Pimlico was not the customer of an independent business he ran. These are the cases as explained in our false self-employment guide, not a promise that similar facts guarantee the same outcome.

Which rights each status carries today

This comparison is for Great Britain as at 16 October 2026. Every right has its own eligibility rules and exceptions. It is not an award of those rights based on your answers.

If you may be an employee

• Worker rights, including minimum wage, statutory paid holiday, unlawful-deduction protection and working-time protections.
• Statutory notice, normally after one month; statutory redundancy pay, normally after two years; family-leave rights and a day-one right to request flexible working. Leave and statutory family pay have separate conditions.
• Ordinary unfair-dismissal protection normally requires two years of continuous employment today. Some automatically unfair reasons have no qualifying period. The scheduled reduction to six months for dismissals from 1 January 2027 is not the rule today.
• SSP if separately eligible, plus pension auto-enrolment where the age, earnings and other conditions are met.

If you may be a limb (b) worker

• Minimum wage, subject to age, apprentice and other eligibility rules; statutory paid holiday, normally 5.6 weeks a year, proportionate for part-time work.
• Protection against unlawful wage deductions, rest breaks and working-time limits, subject to the relevant rules and exceptions. Discrimination and whistleblowing protections have their own legal tests.
• Pension auto-enrolment depends on age, earnings and other conditions. SSP and statutory family pay need separate checks.
• This status alone does not give ordinary unfair-dismissal protection, statutory redundancy pay, statutory notice, or employee family-leave and flexible-working-request rights. Contractual rights may give more. Employee status remains worth checking.

If you may be genuinely self-employed

There is no statutory minimum wage, paid holiday, SSP, ordinary unfair-dismissal protection, statutory redundancy pay or employee statutory notice from a genuinely self-employed relationship. Contractual payment and notice rights remain relevant. Health-and-safety duties and some discrimination protections can apply under their own tests. Do not read an unclear result as “no rights”.

Sick pay and tax need a separate check

Worker status for holiday does not automatically qualify you for SSP. Eligibility includes employed status for tax, having started work and meeting sickness-notification rules. From 6 April 2026, eligible people receive SSP from the first full qualifying day of sickness absence, with no lower earnings limit. It is £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for up to 28 weeks. A part-week payment depends on qualifying days. Use our SSP guide.

Tax status and employment rights are separate systems. HMRC’s CEST tool and an “outside IR35” label do not decide worker rights to minimum wage or holiday. This checker does not calculate pay or pension eligibility, so it does not collect your age, apprentice year, salary, hourly rate or pay period. Read the minimum wage pay-check guide for those separate rules.

Agency workers

Eligible agency workers have minimum wage and holiday rights from the start. The Agency Workers Regulations add equal treatment on basic pay and working conditions after 12 qualifying weeks in the same role with the same hirer. This does not automatically make you the hirer’s employee. See our agency workers’ rights guide and umbrella-company guide.

14 October 2026 consultation: proposals, not law

What to do with your result

Save your contract, payslips or invoices, rotas and messages showing control, pay-setting and substitution rules. Keep lawful copies outside work systems, not customers’ or colleagues’ confidential information. Ask the firm to explain its status decision in writing, but get advice before confronting it if losing shifts or a visa-linked job would put you at risk.

Take the result and the evidence to your union, Acas on 0300 123 1100, Citizens Advice or a law centre. A grievance or status discussion does not stop a tribunal deadline. Check the time limit for the right you want to enforce; do not wait for the consultation or the employer’s agreement. Do not resign or amend tax returns on this tool’s indication alone.

For Northern Ireland, use the Labour Relations Agency and our Northern Ireland guide. The form deliberately does not apply Great Britain law to a Northern Ireland answer.