Blog

We have been watching the news with a certain amount of trepidation regarding the passage of the  new Employment Rights Bill introduced in October 2024 that is currently making its’ way through Parliament.

The Employment Rights Bill 2024 which creates a raft of pro-employee changes will likely be in force by 2026.

There should be no doubt however that these changes are wide-ranging and significant, and this is the biggest shake up of employment law for many years.

Key changes are as follows:

·       Day-one Employment rights, to claim Unfair Dismissal (currently two years’ service is required)

·       Day one right to request Flexible working instead of having to wait six months.

·       Prohibition of firing and re-hiring employees if the reason is the refusal to agree to new terms of employment or to enable the employer to recruit somebody new into the same role under new terms.

·       Zero-hours contract changes introducing the ‘Right to Guaranteed Hours’ where employees must be offered a number of guaranteed hours at the end of any reference period.  This is a modified version of what was expected as many anticipated zero hours contracts would become unlawful.

·       increased protection for employees returning from maternity leave so that employees are protected for six months after they return from maternity leave.

By far the most significant of these is the introduction of day one employment rights and rights on return from maternity leave.

Right not to be unfairly dismissed

Currently, and for many years previously employees have had to build up two years’ service to achieve protection from unfair dismissal. This briefly changed to one year some  years ago, but apart from that brief period, the qualifying period has always been two years  irrespective of which Government has been in power.

To now abolish it altogether is a momentous change to employment rights. There may be some flexibility to dismiss employees who are perceived to be considered to be a ‘bad fit’ for a role during the probationary period but otherwise dismissals must be conducted regarding a prescribed set of circumstances and only after following a fair procedure.

While undoubtedly heralded as good news for employees, employers may be less than happy with these changes.

This will undoubtedly lead to additional training requirements for Managers and HR in conducting Disciplinary and Grievance procedures and dismissals not to mention costly recruitment mistakes.

This will benefit some employees but conversely it may not.  It is anticipated that employers will be much more wary of hiring people. This may mean recruitment will be reduced and a number of other restrictions which will include tightening up contracts to add certain misdemeanours to the list of behaviours by way an employee could be dismissed for gross misconduct.

Right to an additional period of protection for employees returning from maternity leave.

Currently employees are only protected from pregnancy and maternity discrimination up until the time when they return to work.

That has proved a challenging time for employees as frequently employers have become accustomed to such employees not doing the role and prefer their replacement.

The new law will prevent employers from being able to dismiss returning employees for six months after they return. This is of course in addition to normal protection against unfair dismissal.

What should you be doing to prepare for the changes?

For employers it makes sense to review your existing arrangements,

This will entail

·       Reviewing existing procedures and policies to ensure fairness.

·       Drafting new policies on Disciplinary issues,  Flexible Working and Maternity

·       Additional training for Managers and Human Resources to update them on new laws and the requirements.

·       Changes to recruitment policies If for example you have a system of recruiting employees without rigorous checks or interviews you may need to review that. In future you will not be able to ‘wait and see’ if it works out.

·       You may also wish to review performance of existing employees before the new Employment Bill becomes law. If you have someone on a PIP or who is not performing you may want to consider reviewing their continued employment now, if they have less than two years’ service

·       Increasing pre-employment checks upon employees.

It will take some time for this new law to become practice but when it does employers must be prepared for the radical changes.

by Lynne Burns

the founder of LB LAW,  & Collaboration Partner – The Brooke Law Group LLP

(photo source: nensuria / Freepik)