Advice from an HR consultant in Suffolk on the Employment Rights Act changes already in force and the bigger ones heading your way through 2026 and 2027.
I’ve been having the same conversation with a lot of business owners lately.
They know employment law has changed. They’ve seen the headlines. But they haven’t had time to work out what actually applies to them.
The problem is, some of these changes are already live. And the ones still coming will hit harder.
If your contracts, policies or management processes haven’t been updated recently, you could already be out of step. Here’s a breakdown of what’s happened so far and what you need to prepare for next.
The changes already in force since April 2026
Several significant reforms under the Employment Rights Act landed in April 2026. If you haven’t already reviewed your documentation and internal processes, now is the time.
Two of the biggest shifts relate to sick pay and family leave. Statutory Sick Pay now applies from day one of absence, with no lower earnings limit. That means every employee qualifies, regardless of what they earn. Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave are also now day one entitlements, so new starters have immediate access to these rights.
A new category of leave has also been introduced: Bereaved Partner’s Paternity Leave. On top of that, whistleblowing protections have been expanded to cover disclosures connected to sexual harassment.
Other changes that took effect in April include:
- Collective redundancy protective awards extended to up to 6 months’ pay
- A simplified process for trade union recognition
- The launch of the Fair Work Agency
- Updated guidance on menopause and gender equality
For your business, the practical impact depends on how recently your contracts and policies were last reviewed. Many of the employers I work with are still operating from documents written several years ago. That’s where gaps start to appear, particularly around sickness absence procedures and family leave entitlements. Manager awareness is another area that often needs attention, because your team leads need to understand what employees are now entitled to from their first day.
The July 2026 deadline you can’t afford to miss
From 1 July 2026, anyone you take on will gain unfair dismissal protection after just 6 months. The full legal effect kicks in from January 2027.
If you’re used to having a longer window to assess new hires before they gain employment rights, that safety net is shrinking fast. The commercial risk goes up when probation periods aren’t properly structured or when performance concerns aren’t recorded early enough.
What does this mean in practice? Your recruitment process matters more. Your onboarding needs to be tighter. And those first few months of employment need proper check-ins, documented conversations and clear expectations. If someone isn’t right for the role, you need to be acting on that with evidence well before the six-month mark.
Dismissals that happen without a paper trail, or where feedback was only ever given verbally, will leave you exposed.
What lands in October 2026
The autumn brings another wave of reforms, and the focus shifts towards prevention and transparency.
The standout change is a new legal duty on employers to actively prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. This includes certain forms of third-party harassment, so it covers situations involving customers or visitors, not just colleagues. You’ll need to show that you’ve taken reasonable steps to prevent it. That means having proper policies, delivering training and making sure your reporting routes are clear and accessible.
Alongside that, employers will be required to tell employees about their right to join a trade union, and union access rights will be strengthened. There are also tighter rules around tipping practices and further reforms to recognition processes, plus a Fair Pay Agreement body for Adult Social Care.
The key takeaway from this phase is that being reactive won’t cut it. Employers will need to demonstrate what they’ve done to prevent issues, not just how they responded after the fact. If your HR consultancy services in Suffolk or elsewhere haven’t flagged this to you yet, it’s worth getting ahead of it now.
The 2027 reforms will carry the biggest financial weight
The changes arriving in 2027 are the ones I’d encourage every business owner to take seriously, because they affect how you structure your workforce, manage performance and handle contractual changes.
The unfair dismissal qualifying period will be formally reduced to 6 months. Compensatory awards could become uncapped, which significantly raises the financial stakes of getting a dismissal wrong. Pregnant employees and new mothers will receive enhanced protections. Flexible working rights are also being updated.
Zero hours contracts face major reform. Employees on these arrangements will be entitled to guaranteed hours after a qualifying period, along with compensation for short-notice shift cancellations. Umbrella companies will face new regulation. And fire and rehire practices will become automatically unfair in most circumstances.
Statutory bereavement leave is being introduced too, covering pregnancy loss.
If you rely on casual or flexible staffing arrangements, you’ll need to rethink how you schedule and guarantee working hours. If you’ve ever used fire and rehire as a restructuring tool, that option is effectively being closed off. And if your approach to underperformance has been informal up to now, the cost of continuing that way just went up considerably.
Questions worth asking yourself right now
Before you put this to one side and move on with your day, it’s worth pausing on a few things:
- When were your employment contracts and policies last properly reviewed?
- Do your managers know what employees are entitled to from day one?
- Is your probation process documented, with regular reviews and written records?
- Could you demonstrate to a tribunal that you’ve taken reasonable steps to prevent harassment?
- How would your business cope financially with an uncapped compensatory award?
If any of those questions gave you pause, it’s a sign that some work is needed before the next wave of changes arrives.
A sensible place to start
I offer a free, short impact assessment for business owners who want to understand where they stand. We’ll look at which changes affect your business specifically, what needs updating, where your financial or operational risk might be increasing, and what to prioritise first.
As an outsourced HR consultant in Suffolk, I work with businesses like yours every day to make sense of all of this and put practical steps in place. If you’d like a confidential chat about what these changes mean for you, get in touch and we’ll take it from there.
