trial-shift

---
name: trial-shift
description: Designs a paid trial shift for one hospitality job, with the tasks, the supervisor, a 1 to 4 scorecard, the exact pay owed and the messages to send the candidate.
---

# A trial shift that tells you something real, paid the way the law expects

You give the job, the candidate's age, the date you want them in, and what went wrong with the last person you hired. You get back a one page plan: the hours, the four tasks they will actually be judged on, who stands next to them, a scorecard scored 1 to 4, the exact pay in pounds and pence, and the words to send the candidate before and after.

## What it does

1. **Collect seven facts before writing anything.** The job title as advertised, the type of venue, the candidate's age, the hourly rate you already pay for that role, the date and the service you want them in, the name of the person who will supervise them, and the single thing the last bad hire got wrong. The age is not optional: it decides the legal minimum you must pay. If the owner does not know the candidate's age, ask for it and stop until you have it, because guessing the age is how a trial gets underpaid.

2. **Set it as paid from the start and do the money first.** GOV.UK's minimum wage guidance says "an individual conducting work in a trial lasting longer than one day is likely to be entitled to the minimum wage in all but very exceptional circumstances", and the factors it lists, including "whether the tasks carried out have a value to the employer beyond testing", are judged after the event, not by you on the day. Use the April 2026 rates: £12.71 an hour for 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, £8.00 for under 18 and for apprentices in their first year. Take the higher of that rate and the rate you already pay for the role, multiply by the planned hours, then round up to the next whole pound. A three hour front of house trial at the 21 and over rate is £38.13, paid as £39.

3. **Cap it at one shift on one day and write the start and finish times down.** Acas states "A work trial period should be for a reasonable amount of time. For example, 2 hours or a shift." Default to three hours for front of house and four hours for kitchen, starting one hour before service so the candidate sees set up as well as the rush. Never split a trial across two days, and never book a full Saturday night as a trial. If the owner asks for longer, tell them that is a first paid shift with a contract behind it, not a trial.

4. **Choose exactly four tasks that are the job, not the holes in your rota.** Each task is something from the advert, done once, with a clear finish. For a bartender: make three cocktails from your own menu to spec, take and pour a four drink round at the bar during service, change a keg or line under supervision, and cash up one till section with the supervisor. For a waiter: lay and check four covers, take a table of four including one allergen question, carry three plates to a table, and run one card payment. For a kitchen porter: break down and restart the pass mid service, run a full wash cycle including the filter, and take a delivery to the walk in with dates recorded. For a breakfast chef: cook one full order to ticket, plate two specials to the photograph, and do the temperature checks. Name the four in the plan so nobody improvises on the night.

5. **Name one supervisor and keep them beside the candidate for all four tasks.** Acas lists "the employer does not observe the applicant carrying out the tasks" as one of the things that makes the minimum wage due, and an unobserved trial also tells you nothing you can defend later. Put a real name in the plan, not "whoever is on". Take that person off their own section for the assessed tasks and say so on the rota, or the trial quietly becomes an extra pair of hands on a busy service.

6. **Build the scorecard: four criteria, scored 1 to 4, with a line of written evidence each.** The four are Does the work (speed and accuracy once service starts), Takes direction (did one correction stick, or did you say it twice), With people (customers and the rest of the section), and Clean and safe (hand washing, allergen question asked, knives, glass and spills). Write what each of 1, 2, 3 and 4 looks like for that job before the shift, so two managers scoring the same candidate land in the same place. Beside every score the supervisor writes one line of what the candidate actually did, filled in during the shift, not from memory the next morning.

7. **Fix the decision rule in writing before the candidate arrives.** State the number: for example, offer at 13 or more out of 16 with no criterion scored 1; a 1 on Clean and safe is an automatic no whatever the total; 10 to 12 earns one more paid shift on a different service, not a second unpaid look. Put the rule at the top of the scorecard, above the scores. A threshold decided after you have met somebody is not a threshold, it is a feeling with a number written next to it.

8. **Do the paperwork that a paid shift brings with it.** GOV.UK tells employers they "must check that a job applicant is allowed to work for you in the UK before you employ them", so the right to work check happens before the candidate starts, not after you decide to keep them. Record the hours worked, put the payment through payroll rather than the till, and issue a payslip on or before payday showing the hours, which GOV.UK's payslip guidance requires where pay varies by time worked. Brief them on allergens and food safety before they touch food, and if they are under 18 flag the hours and task restrictions for your adviser to confirm.

9. **Write the two messages: the invitation and the outcome.** The invitation states the date, start and finish times, the address, who to ask for at the door, the four tasks, what to wear, the hourly rate, the total they will be paid, how and when that payment arrives, and the sentence "this is a paid trial and not an offer of a job". The outcome goes out within 48 hours in both versions, the offer and the no, and the no names one concrete thing from the scorecard rather than "we went with someone else". Hospitality is small and people talk, so the no is the message that gets screenshotted.

## Then it checks

1. The output gives a total pay figure in pounds and pence, the hourly rate used, and which age band produced it, and that rate is not below the April 2026 band for the candidate's stated age.
2. The start and finish times fall on one calendar day and total no more than one shift, with the hours shown, not described.
3. All four assessed tasks name something that appears in the job being advertised, and none of them is scheduled without the named supervisor present.
4. The scorecard carries exactly four criteria, a 1 to 4 scale with wording for every level, and a blank evidence line under each criterion.
5. The pass threshold appears as a number at the top of the scorecard, above the scores, together with at least one automatic no.
6. The invitation message contains the hourly rate, the total pay, when it will be paid, and the sentence "this is a paid trial and not an offer of a job".

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Never produce an unpaid trial shift, and never present one as an option, even if the owner asks for it. HMRC can recover the arrears, add a penalty of up to 200% of what is owed capped at £20,000 per worker, and name the business publicly, which is a bigger bill and a worse advert than the £39 the shift would have cost.
- Never guess the candidate's age, the venue's own hourly rate, or the length of a shift. An assumed age that drops the pay into a lower band is underpayment on the record, and an assumed rate below what the owner already pays their team is the thing the candidate tells the rest of the section.
- Never rewrite the scorecard wording, the criteria or the threshold after the shift has happened, and never fill in evidence lines the supervisor left blank. A blank line is the finding: it means nobody watched, and reporting a score for something nobody saw is worse than reporting nothing.
- This is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor, accountant or HR adviser to check before it is used. It applies published GOV.UK and Acas guidance to one job in one venue; it is not employment law advice and must never be presented as such.

## Built from
- Department for Business and Trade, "Calculating the minimum wage: Eligibility for the minimum wage", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/calculating-the-minimum-wage/eligibility-for-the-minimum-wage, last updated 6 January 2026: the six factors that decide whether a trial creates minimum wage entitlement, and the line that a trial longer than one day is likely to be paid work in all but very exceptional circumstances.
- Acas, "Interviewing job applicants", https://www.acas.org.uk/recruitment/interviewing-job-applicants, last updated 30 June 2026: the "2 hours or a shift" length, and the four conditions that make the minimum wage due, which is where the named supervisor and the on role tasks come from.
- GOV.UK, "National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates", https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates, rates applying from April 2026, read 13 September 2026: the £12.71, £10.85 and £8.00 hourly figures used to calculate the trial pay.
- Amanda Trewhella, Freeths, "Don't fall foul of minimum wage with unpaid trial shifts in the hospitality industry", https://www.freeths.co.uk/insights-events/legal-articles/2024/dont-fall-foul-of-minimum-wage-with-unpaid-trial-shifts-in-the-hospitality-industry/, 19 March 2024: the penalty of up to 200% of arrears capped at £20,000 per worker plus public naming, and the unsupervised Saturday night bar shift as the example of a trial that is really unpaid labour.
- Home Office, "Check if someone can work in the UK", https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work, no publication date shown on the page, read 13 September 2026: the requirement to complete the right to work check before the person starts, which is why the check sits in step 8 and not after the decision.

# trial-shift

## You are given

A folder from a UK hospitality business containing `trial-facts.md`, the seven facts Claude collected and would not start without: the job title as advertised, the type of venue, the candidate's age, the hourly rate the owner already pays for that role, the date and the service the candidate is wanted in, the name of the person who will supervise them, and the single thing the last bad hire got wrong. It also carries the start and finish times Claude set, the four assessed tasks it chose from the advert, the 1 to 4 wording it wrote for each of the four criteria, and the pass threshold and automatic no rules it fixed.

There may also be the advert, the menu or drinks list, and the rota for that service. If the candidate's age is absent, write nothing and report it.

## Produce

Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `trial-plan.md` - one printable page. The candidate, the job title, the venue, the date in DD Month YYYY, the start and finish times on one calendar day, the total hours shown as a number, the named supervisor, the four assessed tasks numbered with the point in the shift each happens, and the pay block from `pay-calculation.md` reproduced in full.
2. `pay-calculation.md` - the arithmetic shown, not asserted, in this order: the candidate's age, the age band, the statutory rate for that band, the rate the owner already pays for the role, which of the two is higher and is therefore used, the planned hours, the multiplication, and the total rounded up to the next whole pound. Use the April 2026 rates as quoted in SKILL.md: £12.71 for 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20, £8.00 for under 18 and for apprentices in their first year. Name the source and the date read. If the rate used falls below the band for the stated age, write the failure at the top, write no other files and stop.
3. `scorecard.md` - the pass threshold and the automatic no rules printed at the top, above everything else. Then exactly four criteria in this order: `Does the work`, `Takes direction`, `With people`, `Clean and safe`. Under each, the wording for 1, 2, 3 and 4 in full as Claude wrote it, a `Score` box, and a blank `What the candidate actually did` evidence line. Ends with the supervisor's name, the date and a signature line. Every score box and every evidence line ships empty.
4. `scorecard-print.md` - the same page laid out for A4, one sheet, to be filled in during the shift on a clipboard.
5. `invitation-message.md` - ready to send: the date, the start and finish times, the address, who to ask for at the door, the four tasks, what to wear, the hourly rate, the total they will be paid in pounds and pence, how and when that payment arrives, and the sentence `this is a paid trial and not an offer of a job` verbatim.
6. `outcome-messages.md` - both versions written out, the offer and the no, each to go out within 48 hours of the shift. The no leaves one bracketed placeholder `[ONE CONCRETE THING FROM THE SCORECARD]` for the supervisor to fill from the evidence lines, and never a general reason.
7. `paperwork-checklist.md` - a table, columns in this order: `Item`, `Before or after the shift`, `Who does it`, `Date`, `Initials`. Rows for: right to work check completed before the candidate starts, hours worked recorded, payment put through payroll and not the till, payslip issued on or before payday showing the hours, allergen and food safety brief given before touching food, and, only if the candidate is under 18, a line reading `Under 18 hours and task restrictions to be confirmed by the owner's adviser`. `Date` and `Initials` ship empty.
8. `supervisor-note.md` - one short page for the named supervisor: they stay beside the candidate for all four assessed tasks, they come off their own section for those tasks and the rota says so, and they fill the evidence lines during the shift rather than from memory the next morning.

## Rules

- Never produce an unpaid trial, never offer one as an option, and never write a version of any file in which the candidate is not paid, even if the input asks for it.
- Never guess the candidate's age, the venue's own hourly rate or the length of the shift. A missing value stops the job and is reported.
- Never round the pay down. Multiply, then round up to the next whole pound, and show both the exact figure and the rounded figure.
- The start and finish times must fall on one calendar day and total no more than one shift. Never split a trial across two days and never write a full Saturday night as a trial. If `trial-facts.md` asks for longer, write no plan and report that it is a first paid shift with a contract behind it, not a trial.
- Every one of the four assessed tasks must name something that appears in the job being advertised. If one does not, leave it out, leave the slot blank and report it.
- One named supervisor, present for all four assessed tasks. Never "whoever is on".
- Never write a score, never fill an evidence line, and never rewrite the criteria, the 1 to 4 wording or the threshold. A blank evidence line is a finding, not something to complete.
- The threshold and at least one automatic no must appear as numbers at the top of the scorecard, above the scores.
- Make no statement that the trial is lawful or compliant, and give no view on minimum wage enforcement. This is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor, accountant or HR adviser to check before it is used.
- Use British English, £ and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes.

## Return

A list of the files written with their absolute paths, the candidate's age band and the statutory rate for it, the rate used and which source it came from, the planned hours, the exact pay figure and the rounded figure, the start and finish times and the total hours, the named supervisor, the four assessed tasks with the advert line each came from, the pass threshold and the automatic no rules, and any task that could not be traced to the advert.