Moving your peopleto your own company.
In most cases the employment transfers automatically under TUPE, which keeps continuous service, terms and accrued holiday intact. Teamed plans the date and runs both payrolls through the change.
Two routes, one of them worse
How do people move from an employer of record to your company
There are two ways to do this and they are not equivalent, whatever a spreadsheet says. One preserves everything your people have built up. The other quietly throws it away and hopes nobody notices for a year.
The UK has TUPE, the transfer of undertakings rules. Where they apply, the employment moves to the new employer automatically, on the same terms, with continuous service intact. Nobody resigns and nobody is rehired. The contract simply has a different employer on it.
The alternative is to end the employment and start a new one. It is faster to arrange, which is exactly why it gets chosen, and it resets the clock on every right that depends on length of service.
Why continuous service is the whole argument
Two of the most important protections in UK employment law are earned through time served, and both restart if you break the chain.
Ordinarily needs two years of continuous service. Break it and a three year employee is back to being a new starter with none of it.
Also needs two years, and the amount is calculated from service. A resign and rehire wipes what has accrued and starts it again at zero.
What moves and what does not
What actually transfers
Where TUPE applies, the terms move with the person. Salary, notice, holiday entitlement, accrued but untaken holiday, contractual benefits and the original start date all carry over. So do liabilities. A grievance or a claim that existed the day before the transfer still exists the day after, now against you.
Pension is the significant carve out. Occupational pension rights are treated differently from the rest of the package, so an existing arrangement does not simply follow the employee across. Automatic enrolment duties still apply to the new employer from the transfer date, so this needs designing rather than assuming.
There is also a duty to inform and, where you plan measures affecting people, to consult. Employees or their representatives have to be told in good time before the transfer rather than alongside the payslip.
Timing
Pick the date around payroll, not around the paperwork
The cleanest transfer lands on the first day of a pay period, and ideally at the start of a tax month. Move somebody mid month and two employers each run a part period, which means two payslips, two sets of deductions and a much higher chance of somebody being paid twice or not at all.
Confirm the entity can employ
The company exists, the PAYE reference is live, a pension scheme is in place and the bank account can pay salaries.
Inform and consult
Written information to employees or their representatives in good time, covering what is changing, when, and why.
Mirror the terms
Contracts on the same terms with continuous service preserved and the original start date carried over.
Transfer on the first day of a pay period
The old payroll closes, the new one opens, and holiday balances carry across as they stood the night before.
Check every payslip by hand, once
Tax codes and cumulative figures are where errors surface, and they are far cheaper to fix in month one than in month six.
Worth saying plainly
This is the step where doing it cheaply costs the most
A resign and rehire can be arranged in a fortnight and looks like a saving. What it actually does is remove protections your people already hold, without most of them realising until the day it matters.
If your timeline is too tight to do this properly, the better answer is usually to stay where you are for another quarter and move cleanly.
Teamed's employer of record in the UK is a flat £479 per employee per month, with zero FX mark-up in any currency pairing and one invoice at the end of it. Contractors, employer of record and your own entity all run on one platform, so moving between them later does not mean changing provider or re-onboarding anybody. Real HR and legal experts handle the work, not a ticket queue.
Talk to a member of the team and we will tell you plainly which one suits where you are. If you would rather look at the numbers yourself first, the crossover calculator models it for the UK.
Who carries it
Your own entity, when it's time. We set it up, migrate you in, and hand it back intact.
Global Entity and Employment Operations, which we call GEMO, is how Teamed forms your company, registers it for corporation tax and payroll, runs it month to month and keeps its filings current, across 100+ countries. You stay the employer. We do the work behind it.
In the UK that matters a little more than elsewhere, because Teamed employs through its own local entity rather than a partner. The people who would run your company are the people already running ours.
They set up our EU entity and moved hires across without missing a payroll.
Questions
Questions about moving people across
Do employees have to agree to the move?
Where TUPE applies the employment moves automatically, so it does not depend on each person agreeing. They do have to be informed, and an employee can object, which has consequences worth understanding before you start.
Does their start date change?
No. Continuous service carries across, so the original start date stays. That is the main reason to use a transfer rather than a resign and rehire.
What happens to unused holiday?
Accrued holiday moves with the employee as it stood on the transfer date. It is not paid out and it does not reset.
What about the pension?
Occupational pension rights are treated differently from the rest of the package and do not simply follow across. Automatic enrolment duties apply to the new employer from the transfer date, so design that part deliberately.
Can we change terms at the same time?
Changing terms because of the transfer is the thing TUPE exists to prevent. Changes need a reason of their own and, usually, agreement.
Sources
- TUPE, the Transfer of Undertakings regulations
- Employment Rights Act, continuous service and unfair dismissal
- The Pensions Regulator, automatic enrolment on a transfer
The rest of the the UK guides
Looking for a job in Moving From Eor To Your Own Entity yourself? Teamed does not hire people directly. Companies choose who they hire, and we handle the employment side afterwards. Here is why we cannot help with your search.
