The Visualized Employment Contract. An Exploratory Study on the Use of Comic Strips in Danish Employment Contracts

Abstract

The essence of any employment contract should be a clear and understandable communication of the employment relationship. Using comics as a medium for employment contracts can help in achieving this goal. This article provides an exploratory case study in the context of Danish labour contracts. In the first part, it is assessed whether an employment contract that contains comic strips would meet the formal requirements of Danish and EU labour law. In the second part, the textual and comic versions of an employment contract of a Danish leisure sport organization are tested on two volunteer groups in an experiment. In this experiment the participants first had to report on their impression of the contract received (textual or comic) and then, secondly, had to explain two legal terms and solve two cases based on their recollections of the contractual clauses. The results show that both the personal utility and actionable knowledge of the users of comic contracts increased significantly compared to the users of the textual version of the contract. This provides initial evidence that contract visualization with the help of comic strips can be an important component in ongoing reforms of labour law aiming at providing workers with more transparency and predictability about their employment relationship.