Chapter 6 Employers Responsibilities to Students on IE
Your employers responsibilities to you as their employee are outlined in the contract of employment you have signed. (CivilServant, 2025g) You should read your contract of employment carefully before signing it.
Figure 6.1: A panoramic picture of the Oxford Road with University Place on the left and the Kilburn Building on the right of the picture.
6.1 What your employer needs to do
Your employer must treat you with respect, just like they would any other employee. Yes you are a student but you’re also an employee like any other. Specifically this means that they must:
- Give you a fixed term contract of employment. That’s usually 12 months, but anywhere between 9 and 15 months is acceptable, starting between June and September and finishing by the following September in time for the next academic year (CivilServant, 2025h)
- Pay you minimum wage or higher. (CivilServant, 2025l) The job market for computer scientists is such that you will usually be paid more than minimum wage, but some employers (even big ones) pay lower wages. In the UK, placement salaries range from minimum wage to £60k+ depending on the sector and location of the employer, see cdyf.me/finding#undersell (Hull, 2025c)
- Provide you with projects to work on where you can apply the skills and knowledge you’ve learned at University
- Help you learn new skills and acquire new knowledge from your colleagues and their customers, clients or other stakeholders
- Treat you with respect. Although you are probably one of the most junior employees, you should not just be the office dogsbody, whose main responsbilities are making cups of tea and running errands for your colleagues.
6.2 If your employer treats you unfairly
If you don’t think an employer can offer you the working conditions described in section 6.1, we encourage you to look elsewhere for employment before signing a contract of employment.
If you feel that your employer has withdrawn conditions in section 6.1while you are employed on a placement year, please speak to your line manager about it and/or get in touch with the placements team sooner rather than later, see section 0.1.
6.3 Know your rights and responsibilities
We discussed your responsibilites as a student in chapter 5. You also need to familiarise yourself with your rights and responsibilities as an employee and what to do if things go wrong. In the UK, these are clearly specified via information at gov.uk, see figure 6.2. For example:
- Contracts of employment and employee status (CivilServant, 2025g, 2025h)
- Minimum wage (CivilServant, 2025l)
- Your rights and protected characteristics (CivilServant, 2025e)
- Taxes, see discussion in 8.7 (CivilServant, 2025k, 2025a, 2025c, 2025b)
- If things go wrong: disciplinary action, dismissal and handing in your notice (CivilServant, 2025d, 2025f, 2025i)
Figure 6.2: All employees have an employment contract with their employer. A contract is an agreement that sets out an employee’s employment conditions, rights, responsibilities and duties. The gov.uk website gives you basic information on what to expect from UK employers. It is worth familiarising yourself with this information. (CivilServant, 2025g, 2025h)
If you’re not working in the UK you’ll need to familiarise yourself with your rights and responsibilities as an employee in the country you are living in, see chapter 4