When you are working on writing a job offer letter template, you might have been looking at job offer letter examples. These offer of employment letters might give you a general idea of the kind of job offer letter format that you want to use for your employment offer letter template, but they might not include all the right information for your specific use. When creating an offer of employment letter, you might need to add specific information that is not present in generic example letters of the same type.
Using an employment offer letter template can help you to change just a few details each time you hire someone and still provide an effective letter. This information is key to communicating when the employee will start work for you and what benefits and perks you might be offering to the employee. This is the first step in a partnership that you want to get off on a positive foot.
Download for Word Table of Contents
- 1 Employment Offer Letter Templates
- 2 What’s included in a job offer letter?
- 3 Job Offer Letter Templates
- 4 How do I write an employee offer letter?
- 5 Job Offer Letter Examples
- 6 Are employment offer letters legally binding?
- 7 Offer of Employment Letters
- 8 What are some other details that you can include?
- 9 Employment Letters Are Critical For Business Success
Employment Offer Letter Templates
What’s included in a job offer letter?
This document will need to be printed on official letterhead for your business. If you do not have a business logo or business stationery, you can forego this step, but any company that is consistently hiring employees needs to make sure that these documents are printed on official stationery. You will need to be sure that the information for the company, as well as the new hire’s full name, are listed at the top of the letter.
A description of the job and a salutation to the new hire should follow. This information does not have to be as detailed as the hire documents that the new hire will sign when they start work, but you should outline any information that is needed to make the position title and responsibilities clear and identifiable. You might also want to indicate in the letter any special bonuses or incentives that were offered to the new hire if they were to get the job.
An official signature of the company supervisor or even the owner of the business needs to be at the bottom of this letter and you might also want to welcome the new hire and congratulate them on their new status as an employee. This is more like a letter than it is like an official document, and you will leave the rest of the nuts and bolts of the hiring process up to the onboarding experts who will work with the new hire on their first day of work.
Despite the fact that this is not the official contract that will secure the employee’s position and state that they have agreed to take the job, you will want to be sure that your employment offer letter template is official-looking and includes enough detail to be relevant to a specific job. Generic letters are often not ideal because they might not convey enough information about the job, and they can also feel impersonal and like they are not welcoming enough.
Job Offer Letter Templates
How do I write an employee offer letter?
Employment offer letters need to be written in a specific way to be effective and to convey the right information to the person that you are hiring. Besides being printed on stationary, which includes an official letterhead, you will need to include the following information in your employment offer letter template.
- Date and Company Information: The employment offer letter template is written much like an official letter would be. This means that you will need to have the date of the letter at the top left of the letter and that you will need to put in the legal business name and the address and contact information of your company beneath it. This will all be justified to the left and kept in block format at the top of the letter.
- Formal Letter Formatting: You will need to start the letter with a salutation to your new hire that includes their full name. This can be formatted like a letter and be something akin to, Dear X… You will want to be certain that you have the spelling of the person’s name correctly and that you do not leave out any middle names or secondary last names that they wish to be known by.
- Description of the Position: The position will need to be described in such a way that there is no confusion about the job or what it entails within your company. You will not need to go into a detailed explanation of the work duties, but the title and its relevance to your business should be clear. You might also want to name the direct supervisor and the division that the person will be working in if you have different business locations or work groups within your company.
- Expected Start Date: You will want to indicate this part of the information in the employment offer letter with this exact language. Many things can happen that might delay or change the actual start date of an employee. If you word the letter to indicate that this is the only possible start date, this could lead to issues with their actual hire date in the future.
- Salary and Other Benefits: Indicate the salary that the person will be paid and any benefits or bonuses that you have offered to them as well as part of their hiring package. These might be benefits like retirement, health insurance, or a signing bonus. There might also be allowances that you offer to some employees to help with moving costs to relocate to where your business is. These benefits don’t need to be detailed minutely, but they should be included in your offer of employment letter for clarity and to make sure that the new hire knows what they are getting when they accept the job.
- At-Will Status: This part of the letter will have to indicate that the business owner can terminate an employee at any time for lawful reasons. There does not need to be a long discussion of the reasons that an employee might be terminated. You just need to indicate that you can terminate employees when the law allows for it. The termination clauses and other information about this topic will be included in the onboarding process when the new hire shows up for their first day of work.
- Closer: The closing part of the letter will indicate how the new hire can reach you if they should need to do so. The HR phone number is often the best number to have attached to this part of the letter. You will also want to sign the end of the letter and welcome the new hire again to employment with your business. This is important to give the person being hired the right feeling of welcome to your company. As stated before, you do not want your employment offer letter template to feel impersonal and unfriendly at all.
Job Offer Letter Examples
Are employment offer letters legally binding?
There are some legal considerations that you should have in mind when you offer someone a job with a job offer letter. The main thing that you do need to keep in mind is that you don’t want to have any language in your employment offer letter that might create a contractual obligation. This might be language that goes against the at-will statement in the letter.
- Avoid mention of a “promise” or a “commitment” to any specific clause of the job offer letter
- Do not include information about promotional opportunities or anything that does not pertain to the job that the person is being hired for.
- Make sure that you do not indicate that the job offer letter will be rescinded for any reason. There are many legal problems that can arise from rescinding an offer that has yet to be accepted or that has been accepted but the employee has not started work yet.
While the job offer letter does not carry the same legal weight as the hiring contract that is signed when a new employee begins working for you, it does have the potential to create legal obligations that you do not want to include in a job offer letter.
You also need to be aware that the job offer letters that you send out carry the implication that you will honor the job opening and provide all of the stated benefits that are in the letter to the new hire. If you change the terms of the contract when the new hire shows up to take the job, you could run into legal issues with the new hire. You need to be sure that your job offer letter is not promising things that you do not intend to provide.
While this letter is not legally binding in the most direct sense, and the employee does not sign it like a contract, there is still implied legal commitment that is conferred by the information in the letter itself. You want to be sure that you are not providing promises to employees that you cannot honor.
Offer of Employment Letters
What are some other details that you can include?
If you want to be more detailed about the hiring options that you are giving your new hire, you can include some more detail about the job if you wish. There are various benefits that you might want to include or mention in this letter, but you should be aware that you cannot include these details if they do not apply to your hire offer.
- Description of job duties
- Manager or supervisor name and title
- Work location
- Expected work hours
- Compensation in bonuses or profit-sharing
- Stock options
- Employee benefits like PTO, 401K, and health insurance
- Offer letter expiration date
It can be wise to include an offer letter termination date since it is always possible that the person might be entertaining many job offers. You do not want to have to be left hanging while you wait for the person to commit. Some new hires just never respond to your job offer either, and you do not want to leave a job position open for weeks while you wait to catch up with someone who might have already taken another job.
Job offer letters cannot be made entirely generic for many reasons. Make sure that you do not include too much information and that you are not being so general that the person does not feel welcomed or like you are excited to have them as a new employee. This is a delicate balance, and it can be hard to walk properly. If you are worried about the legal aspects that are connected to your letter, you will need to consider taking your employment offer letter template to a lawyer for review before you start to utilize it.
Employment Letters Are Critical For Business Success
Without a quality employment offer letter in hand, you will likely struggle to get people to accept your job offers. Especially senior hires for management jobs or highly skilled jobs will likely have many job offers to consider every time they are looking for a new job. Making sure that your job offer letter stands out from the crowd is important if you want them to choose your offer over others that they might have gotten.
Your employment offer letter is the first professional contact that new hires will have with your business other than the interview process. You will want to be sure that the employment offer letter that you are using to welcome new hires into your company is drafted correctly. This is one of the most important documents that businesses use for their daily operations. Despite the fact that it is not a true contract, it still must be written properly if you want to be sure that it will serve its purpose correctly and effectively.
