A trial shift you do not pay for is probably a shift
Where a genuine assessment ends and work begins, what the minimum wage is from April 2026, and why saying “paid trial” in the advert is worth more than it costs.
Covers · · 5 min read
There is no separate legal category called a trial shift. There is work, which attracts the minimum wage, and there is a genuine short assessment, which may not. The line between them is not about what you call it.
What moves a trial across the line
The question is whether the person is producing value for the business. A few reliable signals that they are:
- They are on the rota, or the rota assumed them.
- They are covering a section, a station or a position you would otherwise have staffed.
- Food they prepared went out to customers.
- It lasted a full service, or anything close to one.
- It happened on your busiest night, which is the tell — you did not need to assess them on a Saturday.
A forty-minute walk-through where somebody shadows a section and makes one dish that nobody sells is a different thing from a Friday night on the pass. Most disputes are not about the first case.
What it would have cost
From 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour. It is £10.85 for 18 to 20 year olds and £8.00 for 16 and 17 year olds, and the apprentice rate is also £8.00.
A five-hour trial for somebody over 21 is therefore about £64. That is the number to hold against the alternative: an underpayment claim, arrears going back years across everybody you ever trialled, and a reputation among exactly the people you are trying to recruit — because candidates talk about this more than about any other part of hiring.
Say it in the advert
“Trial shift, paid at the full rate” is four words that measurably increase applications, because the unpaid trial is one of the two or three things an experienced chef is screening FOR when they read a listing. You are already going to pay it. Getting credit for it is free.
Covers has a field for whether a trial shift is paid, and it appears on the listing. It is optional to fill in and conspicuous when it is not — which is itself an answer candidates will read.
Current rates, which change every April: National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates