Meaning & use
employee
Last updated
UK/ɪmˈplɔɪiː/
US/ɪmˈplɔɪiː/
Meaning
nouncountable
Someone who has a job with a company or person who pays them regularly for their work.
Grammar: Countable: an employee, thirty employees.
Patterns
- an employee of something
- an employee at something
Every employee receives a badge on the first day.
The company has two hundred employees.
She became an employee at the museum last spring.
Word forms
| plural | employees |
|---|
Common combinations
- full-time employee
- He is a full-time employee of the bank.
- hire an employee
- The shop plans to hire a new employee.
- former employee
- A former employee told the press about the problems.
- employee benefits
- Employee benefits include health insurance.
- fire an employee
- They had to fire an employee who broke the rules.
Synonyms and how they differ
- worker
- Worker is a broader word and may include people who are not formally employed.
- staff member
- Staff member is friendlier and suits schools and offices, while employee is the legal word.
- member of staff
- Member of staff is the more common British form of staff member.
- hand
- Hand is old-fashioned and used for a manual worker on a farm or ship.
Opposites
Word family
- employ verb
- to give someone a paid job
- employer noun
- the person or company that pays workers
- employment noun
- the state of having a paid job
- unemployed adjective
- without a job
- employable adjective
- having skills that make someone suitable for work
Commonly confused: employee or employer?
employee vs employer
An employer pays people to work, while an employee is the person who works for them.
Practice
The factory closed, and every ____ received a letter with details about severance pay.
Choose one answer.
An employee is a person who works for a company, so would receive severance pay. An employer is the one who pays and cannot receive it.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “employee”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.
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