This is a hot topic that we've looked at in seminars and emails in the past and was the subject of a great deal of attention at election time.

The outcome of which has been that with effect from 11 January 2016 it is no longer lawful to have an employee on a zero hours contract where that contract includes an exclusivity clause preventing the employee from taking up secondary employment elsewhere. You could, if it is reasonable to do so, prevent an employee from taking up secondary work with a direct competitor where that could potentially damage your business, but it would be advisable to take advice before you include any clauses in your contract.

Interestingly, despite political parties (predominantly Labour) demonising the zero hours contract, research by CIPD has found that zero hours workers are as happy in their jobs as full time workers. Their study looked at 350 zero hours workers and took into account data from the Office of National Statistics' Labour Force survey, CIPD's Employee Outlook survey, and the Labour Market Outlook survey.

The conclusion was that 65% of zero hours workers are either satisfied or very satisfied with their job and 62% feel that they have the right work/life balance. Most importantly 88% of the zero hours workers said that they chose to work part time.