One blank master and twelve ready roles, in editable Word. Every responsibility is tagged with the kind of work it is, so the description answers the question the labour codes actually ask about the job.
Editable Word, blanks in square brackets, every duty tagged by kind of work.
Every field, with a note on what it is for and which of them the appointment letter needs in its own words. Start here for any role not on the list, including the ones the appointment letter formats already cover.
Production supervisor, machine operator, quality control inspector and stores assistant. The four where the skill category moves the wage floor, and where a manufacturing roster makes the supervisory question live.
HR executive, accounts executive, field sales executive and customer support. Each one carries the reasoning for why doing administration is not the same as being employed in an administrative capacity.
Retail store manager, sales associate, hotel front office executive and academic coordinator. The store manager is the one role in the pack that sits outside the worker definition, and the pack says what that costs.
The same work comparison in four lines, a worked example of the mainly test, and the ten things to confirm before you publish.
Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) keeps the category of skill on the employee master, so Form I is a report and not a rebuild.
It is the evidence four separate legal questions get answered from.
Start with the one nobody has heard about. Section 6(1)(f) of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 makes it a duty of every employer to issue a letter of appointment to every employee, with such information and in such form as the appropriate Government prescribes. Rule 6 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Central) Rules, 2026 supplies the format for central sphere establishments, and it opens by saying that no employee shall be employed in any establishment unless an appointment letter has been issued in it. Sixteen fields. Field (vii) is designation, field (viii) is the type of employment in the words regular, fixed-term employment or contractual, field (ix) is the category of skill, and field (xiv) is the broad nature of duties to be performed. Two of those four can only be filled from a job description. Those are the central rules, so a state sphere employer checks the format its own state has notified, but the duty in the Code reaches everybody.
Then the category of skill, which most Indian employers have never had to write down. Section 6(6)(a) of the Code on Wages, 2019 says the appropriate Government fixes minimum rates taking primarily into account the skill of workers required, under the categories of unskilled, skilled, semi-skilled and highly-skilled, or the geographical area, or both, and state notifications in practice use the two together as a zone and a skill band. Rule 2(1) of the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026 defines all four, and each definition describes an occupation rather than a person: unskilled work requires simply the operating experience and no further skills, semi-skilled work applies skill gained on the job under the guidance of a skilled employee, skilled work calls for initiative and judgment, and highly skilled work calls for a specific level of perfection and full responsibility for the judgment involved. Column 12 of Form I, the statutory Employee Register, then asks for the answer as HS, S, SS or US, whether or not anybody wrote a description to work it out from.
The third question is the expensive one. Section 2(zr) of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 makes a worker anyone doing manual, unskilled, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work, and excludes two groups: anyone employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity, and anyone in a supervisory capacity drawing wages above ₹18,000 a month, or such amount as the Central Government notifies. Read the word mainly, because it is doing all the work. A team lead who spends most of the week on operational tasks does not stop being a worker because part of the role is supervisory, and a designation with the word manager in it decides nothing. What decides it is what the person is employed to do, and the job description is the clearest written record of that anybody keeps. Get it wrong in the employer's favour and you have stripped somebody of the notice, the reasons and the compensation that a termination letter has to carry, which costs more than the opposite error. The same answer decides who standing orders cover, and that is every worker in an industrial establishment employing 300 or more of them, or that employed that many on any day in the preceding twelve months, and nobody below that. Every template here tags each responsibility Operational, Technical, Clerical, Supervisory, Managerial or Administrative, so the question becomes a count.
The fourth is equal pay, and it is decided by two descriptions read side by side. Section 3 of the Code on Wages prohibits discrimination on the ground of gender in wages, and in recruitment, for the same work or work of a similar nature. Section 2(v) defines that as work in respect of which the skill, effort, experience and responsibility required are the same, performed under similar working conditions, with any difference between them not of practical importance. Skill, effort, experience and responsibility are four blocks of a job description, so the comparison is either something you can run in ten minutes or something nobody can run at all. Section 3(2)(i) closes the cheap exit in advance: no employer may reduce anyone's wages in order to comply. One last thing for an existing employee rather than a vacancy. Section 40 and the Third Schedule mean a rewrite that regrades people, or that redistributes work so fewer are needed, takes notice and twenty-one days, and the rest of what changed on 21 November 2025 is a checklist of its own.
Take the closest role, then change three things: the duties you actually need, the category of skill those duties imply, and the working conditions.
| Role | Template | Typical setting | Category of skill | Reports to | Worker? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Production Supervisor | Format 02 | Manufacturing, shop floor | Skilled | Production Manager | Usually |
| Accounts Executive | Format 07 | Corporate office, finance | Skilled | Finance Manager | Usually |
| Retail Store Manager | Format 10 | Retail chain, single store | Highly skilled | Area Manager | Usually not |
| Front Office Executive | Format 12 | Hotel front desk | Semi-skilled | Front Office Manager | Yes |
| All thirteen | Formats 01 to 13 | One blank master, twelve ready roles |
No employee shall be employed in any establishment unless an appointment letter has been issued in the prescribed format. Sixteen fields, two of them filled from a job description.
Source: OSH (Central) Rules 2026, rule 6, G.S.R. 345(E)Unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and highly skilled. Minimum wages are fixed primarily on the skill the work requires, and the register asks which one.
Source: Code on Wages (Central) Rules 2026, rule 2(1), Form I column 12A supervisor above this wage falls outside the worker definition. So does anyone employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity. The description is the evidence of what mainly means.
Source: Industrial Relations Code 2020, s.2(zr)Assistant Manager, Operations tells you nothing about what the person does all week, and the word mainly in s.2(zr) is a question about exactly that. A title cannot answer it. A list of duties can, and that is the only reason the duties have to be specific.
One line, two tests broken. It makes the mainly test unanswerable, because the description stops saying what the person mainly does. And it makes the s.2(v) comparison impossible, because two roles carrying the same open-ended line look identical on paper and are not. Keep it if you want it, keep it last, and never let it carry real work.
It is field (ix) of the prescribed appointment letter and column 12 of the Employee Register, so it gets filled in either way. The only choice is whether somebody decides it from the duties or somebody guesses it in a hurry, and the monthly salary sheet then carries the guess forward every month.
Section 2(v) of the Code on Wages tests skill, effort, experience and responsibility, under similar working conditions. Two descriptions that differ in wording but not in those four are the same work, and s.3 says wages must not differ on the ground of gender. Section 3(2)(i) also rules out the cheap fix: you may not cut anybody's pay to level it.
At-will employment, exempt and non-exempt, and an EEO statement written for a different statute. None of it applies, and worse, all of it crowds out the three fields that do: category of skill, type of employment in the prescribed words, and duties specific enough to classify.
Section 40 of the Industrial Relations Code requires notice and twenty-one days before a change in conditions of service in a Third Schedule matter. A tidy-up of wording is not one. A regrade is, under item 7, and so is a redistribution that reduces the number of persons employed in a department, under item 11. Decide which you are doing before the change takes effect, not after.
Usually written for America
Thirteen templates, editable Word
A blank master, twelve ready roles and the ten-point checklist. The rest of the free HR template library is open too.
Attendo, formerly Petpooja Payroll, is payroll and attendance software used by more than 40,000 businesses in India, across manufacturing, corporate offices, retail, hospitality and education, on a flat annual fee with no per-employee pricing. Designation, category of skill and type of employment sit on the employee master, so the statutory register is generated rather than reconstructed. See what it does.
Attendance, wages and the employee master against one record, not four.
