Experience letter in Pakistan: what to include and how HR should issue it

StreamHCM

Written by the StreamHCM team for HR and payroll managers in Pakistan. Updated on 9 November 2026.

The next employer wants dates and a designation they can match to a CV. The employee wants the letter in the same week as the last salary. HR wants a wording that will not become a dispute. Those three needs are met by a short letter that says what happened and stops there.

As of November 2026. This page is general information based on the attached text of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, including the Punjab amendment notes in that copy. It is not legal advice. Provincial standing orders and the employment contract can differ. Confirm the statute that applies to your establishment before you treat a letter as the statutory certificate.

Four documents that get mixed up

• Service certificate. Standing Order 19. Every permanent workman is entitled to it at dismissal, discharge, retrenchment or retirement. The attached text gives the entitlement and the heading. It does not prescribe a form, and it does not list resignation.
• Experience letter. Employer practice. It states that the person worked for the company, in which role, and between which dates. Companies issue it for resignations and for people who were not permanent workmen, because banks and new employers ask. Where Standing Order 19 applies, the same letter can carry the service-certificate facts, and the heading should say so.
• Relieving letter. A company letter that the person was relieved of duties on a stated last working day, usually after clearance. The Ordinance text checked here does not use that name. It is an internal closing document, useful next to the experience letter, and it is not a substitute for wages due.
• Salary certificate and salary tax certificate. A salary certificate states pay. The salary tax certificate is the employer's certificate of tax withheld. That second document is covered in the salary tax certificate guide. Keep salary and tax off the experience letter unless the employee has asked for a separate salary certificate.

What Standing Order 19 actually says

The full sentence in the attached schedule is: every permanent workman shall be entitled to a service certificate at the time of his dismissal, discharge, retrenchment or retirement from service. Read the limits in that sentence.

• It is for a permanent workman, the category in Standing Order 1(b), not for every person on the payroll by default.
• The moments it names are dismissal, discharge, retrenchment and retirement.
• It says the person is entitled to the certificate at that time. It does not say the employer may wait until a dispute about assets or notice is bargained out.

A probationer who leaves during the three months is not a permanent workman under Standing Order 1(b). Standing Order 19, on this wording, is not the source of a certificate for that exit. Employers often still write a short experience letter if the person asks. Say that it records the dates worked. The rules for ending probation are in the probation period guide.

The establishment coverage is the same Ordinance: in the Punjab text checked here, section 1 applies it where twenty or more workmen are employed, or were employed on any day in the preceding twelve months, with the government-establishment proviso. Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have their own statutes. This page does not quote those Acts.

Fields worth including

1. Company legal name on the letterhead, city and date of issue.
2. Employee name as it appears on the employee record.
3. Designation and department.
4. Joining date and last working day. These must match attendance and the notice period record.
5. A short factual line on the work. One or two duties, in plain words.
6. How the employment ended, in neutral words: resignation, retirement, completion of a fixed contract, discharge or dismissal. Match the fact. Do not dress a dismissal up as a resignation.
7. Name, designation and signature of an authorised person.
8. A copy stored with the employee documents.

CNIC is optional. Prefer to leave it off. An identity number on a letter that the employee will email to strangers is more personal data than a dates-and-designation letter needs. If a bank or a visa desk has asked for it, include it only for that copy, at the employee's request. Home address, phone number, photograph and medical notes do not belong on this letter.

A sample you can adapt

Placeholders only. Replace every bracket. Do not copy a real employee's name into a template file.

If you are issuing the letter as the Standing Order 19 service certificate for a permanent workman at dismissal, discharge, retrenchment or retirement, add a line under the heading: "Service certificate under Standing Order 19." Keep the rest of the letter to the same facts.

How to write it so it stays useful

• Stay factual. Duties, dates and designation are enough. Praise is optional and should still be true.
• No defamatory remarks, and no coded complaints ("we wish them luck in a role better suited to their abilities"). If there was misconduct, the show-cause and the written order already belong on the file. See warning letters in Pakistan. The experience letter is not the place to retry the case.
• Sign it. An unsigned PDF from a shared inbox is easy to doubt.
• Use letterhead. A plain page with no company name is hard to verify.
• Issue it when clearance is complete: laptop, SIM, advances and the last working day agreed. That sequence is good practice. It is not a licence to sit on the letter. For covered workmen, wages and other dues still follow Standing Order 12(4), which requires payment before the expiry of the second working day after termination. The final settlement guide is the money side. The letter is the employment side.
• Match the appointment letter. If the designation changed, the experience letter should show the designation at exit, and the file should show the promotion.

Where the letter sits in offboarding

StreamHCM's employee offboarding record keeps the resignation or termination, the last working day, asset return and the final settlement on the employee profile. Employee documents, including certificates, are stored on that profile and in the documents module. HR can file the signed experience letter there, next to the settlement statement, so a later reference check uses the same dates as payroll. The product stores the document you upload. This page does not describe an automatic letter generator.

FAQ

Related: employee offboarding software, final settlement, notice period, appointment letter, warning letter, salary tax certificate.