How to Write an Employee Recommendation Letter — UK Guide with Examples

The UK employee reference letter vs recommendation letter

In the UK, the standard employer reference is typically a short factual confirmation of employment dates and job title — legally this is all employers are usually required to provide, and many HR departments now limit responses to exactly this for liability reasons. A recommendation letter (sometimes called a character reference or personal recommendation) goes further: it speaks to the quality of the person's work, their character and why the reader should want to hire them. These are usually provided by a direct manager or senior colleague, not the HR department, and they carry significant weight for the recipient.

Structure of an effective recommendation letter

1. Opening — your relationship to the person, for how long, in what capacity. Establish your credibility as a recommender immediately.
2. Their role and responsibilities — brief context for what they actually did, so the reader understands the stakes and scope.
3. Specific strengths with evidence — this is the most important section. Do not list adjectives. Give examples: "When our main client threatened to walk in Q3 2024, [Name] led the recovery plan and retained the account." Specifics are credible; generalities are not.
4. Character and working style — how they work with people, how they handle pressure, what they're like to manage or be managed by.
5. Strong closing endorsement — say clearly that you recommend them and why. End with your willingness to discuss further.

Example recommendation letter — for a leaving colleague

I am writing to strongly recommend [Name] for any role in [field]. I managed [Name] directly for three years at [Company], where they held the position of [Title].

During that period, [Name] consistently delivered work of the highest quality. Most notably, they led our migration to a new CRM system with minimal disruption to an active sales cycle — a project that had stalled for two years before they took ownership of it. They did this with limited resource, clear communication upwards and downwards, and the calm that comes from genuine competence.

Beyond the results, [Name] is an excellent colleague: straightforward, reliable, and the kind of person who makes the teams around them better simply by being in them. They are direct when directness is needed and diplomatic when that's required — a combination that's more uncommon than it should be.

I would re-hire [Name] without hesitation, and I recommend them enthusiastically to anyone considering their application.

[Your name, title, contact]

What makes a recommendation letter ineffective

• Adjective soup with no evidence: "a dedicated, hardworking and enthusiastic team player" tells the reader nothing they couldn't have written themselves. Every word needs to be backed by something specific.
• Vague superlatives: "one of the best employees I've ever managed" only means something if followed by what made them one of the best.
• Length as a substitute for content: a tight, specific, well-evidenced two-paragraph letter outperforms a rambling four-paragraph one every time.
• Lukewarm language: "I can confirm that [Name] performed their duties satisfactorily" is the HR liability version. A genuine recommendation is enthusiastic and specific.

UK-specific considerations

• Reference letters in the UK should not include age, nationality, marital status or other protected characteristics — doing so creates legal risk for the writer.
• If your company has a policy against personal references, write it in a personal capacity and say so explicitly in the letter.
• Confirm with the person receiving the letter what format they need — some applications want PDFs, others accept emails, some want letters on headed paper.

Celebrate the departure properly

If you're writing a recommendation letter for a departing colleague, the leaving card is the other side of the same coin — public recognition alongside the private professional one. An online leaving group card from Thankeeu lets the whole team mark the departure with full messages in one place. Create one here.