What is Continuous Contract?

 According to the Employment Ordinance, an employee who has been employed continuously by the same employer for four weeks or more, with at least 18 hours worked in each week is regarded as being employed under a continuous contract.  With effect from 18 January 2026, the working hours threshold of the "continuous contract" requirement will be revised, which includes lowering the weekly working hours threshold from 18 hours to 17 hours; and providing an alternative of using the aggregate working hours in a specified four-week period as a counting unit in which a week with less than 17 working hours will still be regarded as a continuous employment period if the sum of the working hours of that week and those of the three weeks immediately preceding it reaches 68 hours.

In any dispute as to whether a contract of employment is a continuous contract, the onus of proving that it is not a continuous contract shall be on the employer.

This is not a legal document. The Ordinance remains the sole authority for the provisions of the law explained.