An Employer’s Guide to the Employment Rights Act

Given the wide variety of changes that employers are facing as part of the Employment Rights Act, we’ve pulled together a simple guide to explain your responsibilities as an employer and what you need to do.

It covers the main areas of employment law and helps you understand what you must do when managing employees.

Before you start

You should use this guide if you:

• Employ staff in the UK

• Are responsible for HR or people management

• Need to check your legal obligations

What this guide covers

• recruitment and right to work

• employment contracts and written statements

• pay, leave and working hours

• managing performance and conduct

• dismissal and redundancy. The Employment Rights Act is introducing significant changes that will affect how UK employers hire, manage, and support their people.

What changed in April 2026?

• Statutory Sick Pay: Employees will qualify for SSP with no lower earning threshold and no three-day waiting period.

• Day-one family leave: Employees are entitled to Paternity Leave and Unpaid Parental Leave from the first day in a new job, though this doesn’t need to be paid . Notice can be given from 18 February.

• Bereaved Partner's Paternity Leave: This is a new right to time off following the death of a child's mother or primary adopter.

• Collective redundancy protections: Employers will be subject to larger fines for failure to consult properly.

• Whistleblowing protections: Stronger protections are being brought into effect for workers who report sexual harassment.

• Enforcement of Worker Rights through the Fair Work Agency: A new body is being created to uphold workers' rights and support businesses with compliance. This will cover pay, holidays, safety at work, etc. they will have extensive powers for you to surrender data, access your workplace and support employees, and workers, with employment claims if they believe this is appropriate.

• Menopause & Gender plans: Employers with 250 or more employees will be encouraged to publish the steps they are taking to reduce their gender pay gap and support employees experiencing menopause. Also, employers are now required to report on the gender split of sub-contractors i.e. agency and freelancers they engage.

Action You Need To Take Now

• Unfair dismissal

Employees will only require 6 months’ service to issue a claim for unfair dismissal (currently 2 years)

Effective from 1 January 2027 (meaning employees who have 6 months’ service or more at that date i.e. those employed from 1 July 2026 will be protected)

If your disciplinary policy states that it only applies to employees with 2 years’ service or more, this will need amending to reflect the change. Alternatively, you might remove any reference to service completely (as there may well be some circumstances where a fuller process is preferable, even with a very short-serving employee).

• Harassment

There will be a new separate category of protected disclosure (“whistleblowing”) related specifically to where an employee reasonably believes sexual harassment has or is likely to take place.

Effective from 6 April 2026

In practice this shouldn’t make a difference because making this type of disclosure is already protected (tribunals interpret “breach of a legal obligation” to include this). However, whistleblowing policies will need to be updated to include the new statutory ground.

• Collective consultation

The punishment for failing to collectively consult where more than 20 redundancies are taking place will double to 6 months’ wages per affected employee

Effective from 6 April 2026

Ensure all managers / those involved in potential redundancy processes are fully trained on consultation requirements. Consider strengthening existing staff voice for a (see note on Union requirements below).

• Parental leave

Employees currently need to have been employed for one year to be eligible for parental leave. The Act removes any length of service requirement for parental leave.

Effective from 6 April 2026

Your parental leave policy should be updated to reflect this change.

• Paternity leave

Employees currently need to have been employed for 26 weeks, assessed 15 weeks before the expected birth week, before they qualify for statutory paternity leave. The Act removes any length of service requirement for paternity leave.

Effective from 6 April 2026

Your paternity leave policy should be updated to reflect this change.

Combining paternity leave and shared parental leave

Employees currently lose any entitlement to paternity leave and pay if they take shared parental leave and pay before exhausting their paternity leave entitlements. The Act will enable employees to take paternity leave and pay even after they have taken shared parental leave and pay.

Effective from 6 April 2026

Your shared parental leave policy should be updated to reflect this change.

• Sick pay

SSP will be payable from Day 1 of sickness and payable for the first 3 Qualifying Days of sickness. In addition, the lower earnings limit will be removed, meaning that all eligible employees, regardless of earnings, will be entitled to SSP. Those earning less than the lower earnings limit (currently £123 a week) will become entitled to SSP at a rate of 80% of weekly earnings.

Effective from 6 April 2026

You will need to update your sickness/absence policy to reflect these changes.

 Given that this change is likely to result in employees taking more sick leave, your sickness/absence policy should emphasise:

• The importance of return-to-work interviews following any absence

• That absences will be proactively monitored and managed by the business.