Offer Letters

The offer letter is treated by most Pakistani companies as a courtesy that precedes the real paperwork. In law it is usually the first binding document in the employment relationship, and the disputes it generates — withdrawn offers, no-show candidates, promised terms that the contract later contradicts — are contract disputes, decided under the Contract Act, 1872 rather than the labour statutes. Written for employers as of July 2026; the hiring practices described here should be checked against current law before a template is reused.

An accepted offer is a contract

The Contract Act, 1872 supplies the mechanics. An offer letter is a proposal; the candidate's acceptance, once communicated, converts it into an agreement enforceable at law. Nothing more is needed — no start date reached, no appointment letter issued, no first day worked. Two consequences follow that employers regularly discover late.

First, revocation has a deadline. The company can withdraw an offer freely at any time before acceptance is communicated, and an offer can be written to lapse on a stated date. After acceptance, withdrawal is not revocation but breach.

Second, the letter's contents are terms. If the offer promises a designation, a salary, a bonus, or a start date, those promises bind unless the letter says they are subject to the final contract. This is why the single most valuable sentence in any offer letter is the one stating that employment will be governed by a detailed contract of employment and that the offer is a summary, not the complete terms.

Offer letter, appointment letter, contract: three documents, three jobs

Pakistani hiring paper works best as a sequence rather than a merger. The offer letter carries the commercial handshake: role, pay, start date, conditions, expiry. The appointment letter or employment contract carries the full legal terms — and for workmen it has a statutory character, because the standing-orders framework entitles them to written terms of appointment, stated expressly in the Sindh Terms of Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 2015 and reflected in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa instruments descending from the Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968 [PRECISE APPOINTMENT-LETTER PROVISIONS PER PROVINCE — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

Compressing everything into one document creates a specific failure: a two-page offer letter that becomes, by default, the entire employment contract — silent on confidentiality, intellectual property, discipline, and notice, with the statutory defaults filling the silence for workmen and nothing filling it for managers. Keep the sequence: offer, then contract at or before joining, each consistent with the other.

What belongs in the offer — and what does not

The letter should carry seven things: the employing entity's legal name; the position and location; gross monthly compensation, with the fine breakdown deferred to the contract; the proposed start date; the probation period; the conditions the offer is subject to; and an expiry date for acceptance. Stating probation at the offer stage matters more than it looks — a candidate who first learns of probation in the contract, after resigning from their current job, has both a grievance and a negotiating position.

Three things should be kept out. Language of permanence or job security — "permanent position," "long-term career" — which will be quoted back if the relationship ends during probation. Unapproved promises: bonuses that are actually discretionary, equity that no board resolution supports, allowances still under discussion. And imported at-will phrasing — "employment may be terminated at any time for any reason" — which is legally meaningless for Pakistani workmen and, worse, tells a court the employer drafted without reference to the law that actually governs.

Conditions that actually bite

"Subject to satisfactory references" protects no one if the references are never taken. A condition earns its place when it is express, objective, and exercised before the start date: verification of identity documents and academic credentials, references from named prior employers, confirmation that the candidate is free of obligations to a former employer that would conflict with the role, and, where lawful and relevant, a medical fitness requirement. Pakistan has no general data-protection statute in force as of July 2026 [STATUS OF PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION LEGISLATION — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER], but restraint is still the rule: collect what the condition requires, keep it securely, and use it only for the decision it was collected for.

A condition that fails should be acted on before joining, in writing, by reference to the condition itself. Letting a candidate start work while a condition sits unverified converts a clean non-fulfilment into a messy termination.

Withdrawing an offer

The clean case is withdrawal before acceptance: communicate it, in writing, and the offer dies. The expensive case is withdrawal after acceptance — a hiring freeze, a budget cut, a re-organisation between offer and start date. That is breach, and section 73 of the Contract Act, 1872 entitles the candidate to compensation for the loss that naturally flowed: most sharply, where they resigned from an existing job in reliance on the offer. What the candidate cannot get is the job itself; contracts of personal service are not specifically enforced under the Specific Relief Act, 1877, so the remedy is money, not employment.

Handled well, these situations settle small. Move immediately once the decision is made, put the withdrawal in writing without inventing pretextual performance reasons, and where the candidate has resigned in reliance, pay something that acknowledges it. The claims that grow are the ones where the candidate is left discovering the withdrawal at the office door.

The candidate who never arrives

The mirror problem has weaker remedies. An accepting candidate who takes a counter-offer and vanishes is in breach, but damages are hard to prove and harder to collect, and no Pakistani court will order a person to work. The protections are practical: short acceptance windows so stale offers cannot be revived at the candidate's convenience; joining incentives structured to pay after arrival; start-date check-ins during the notice period; and a pipeline that does not go cold the day one candidate signs. Treat a signed acceptance as strong intent, not certainty.

Signature, records, and email offers

Offers should issue from a signatory actually authorised to hire at that level — a real point in companies where managers extend informal offers the entity later disowns, because an offer made with apparent authority can still bind. Acceptance is the candidate's countersignature or written confirmation; the Electronic Transactions Ordinance, 2002 means an email chain does the job legally, provided the record is kept. File the offer, the acceptance, and the evidence that each condition was verified. In any later dispute — about the promised salary, the start date, a withdrawn offer — the file is the case.

The habit to build is small and cheap: one reviewed offer template per category of hire, an expiry date on every offer, conditions that someone owns and verifies, and a contract that follows within days of acceptance saying everything the offer deferred. Hiring paper is at its best when nobody ever has to read it again.