Unfair Dismissal as a Day-One Right

• Current State: You need two years of service before you can claim unfair dismissal, with some exceptions.
• What’s Changing: The bill removes that two-year wait, making unfair dismissal a right from day one, as long as the employee has started work. With this comes an "initial employment period" (probationary period) which is likely to be 9 months during which time a "light touch" unfair dismissal test will apply where the dismissal is for one of the following reasons. Redundancy and restructure does not fall under this "light touch" test and would be reliant upon the usual unfair dismissal test. What the "light touch" test is, and the process which employers need to be follow during the "initial employment period" is yet to be defined:
• related to the employee’s conduct or capability
• because the employee is subject to a statutory ban (e.g. not entitled to work in the UK, or disbarred from the profession) or
• is ‘some other substantial reason related to the employee
• Panic Meter: 20%. The earliest this will come into force is Autumn 2026 and a lot needs bashing out during consultation, so nothing to worry about anytime soon. 
• Good to Know: Anyone offered a job now will have to work for two years until they get the right to claim unfair dismissal. Anyone who starts work in six months’ time will get unfair dismissal rights after 18 months, assuming it comes in in Autumn 2026. So in practice, it means the qualifying period is slowly reducing over time from now on.

Protection from Third-Party Harassment

• Current State: There are no legal obligations on employers if someone outside the organisation harasses an employee (unless it’s sexual).
• What’s Changing: Employers will be directly liable if they don’t take “ALL reasonable steps” to prevent third-party harassment.
• Panic Meter: 50%. This isn’t rocket science—just good practice that organisations should already have in place, really. Our panic levels are justified here not because of the legislation but because we know this just won't be common practice for many organisations who need to step up or risk some potential hefty financial and reputational consequences.
• Helpful Tip: Use the tools that you'll have (hopefully) recently put into place around the changes to sexual harassment legislation, and extend these to cover all matters of harassment (e.g risk assessments, regular & upto date training, efficient policies and processes for reporting etc).

Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)

• Current State: The first three days of sickness are known as "qualifying days" and are currently not paid for. Statutory Sick Pay kicks in from day 4.
• What's Changing: When the Bill comes into force, SSP will be payable from the first day of sickness.  Also, importantly, the lower earnings threshold for SSP will be removed - at the moment, employees need to have average earnings of at least £123 a week, so that will no longer apply. The rate of SSP will be set at £116.75 a week or, if weekly earnings are lower, a percentage of the employee’s earnings (likely to be somewhere between 60%-80% of weekly earnings).
• Panic Meter: 40%
• Bottom Line: This is going to be a direct cost to the employer and not recoverable from the government so employers needs to consider the impact of this financially.

Flexible Working

• Current State: Employees can request flexible working, and employers can say no if they have one of eight “good” reasons.
• What’s Changing: Rejections will require a bit more explaining to ensue the business decision is reasonable.
• Bottom Line: More paperwork, maybe, but nothing apocalyptic.
• Panic Meter: 0%

Parental Leave & Paternity Leave

• Current State: Eligibility for Unpaid Parental Leave is currently set after having 52 weeks of employment and Paternity Leave eligibility after 26 weeks.
• What's Changing: These will become day 1 rights.
• Anything to do?: Only admin and policy updates once in force - these rights will bring eligibility in line with other types of family leave.
• Panic Meter: 0%

Bereavement Leave

• Current State:   At the moment, there is no legal right for employees to take bereavement leave following a death (except parents who lose a child aged under 18, who are entitled to two weeks’ statutory paid leave).
• What's Changing: Bereavement Leave will be extended to others who are bereaved. The detail around who, if yet to be defined but entitlement will be one week’s unpaid bereavement leave unless Parental Bereavement applies which is to remain at two weeks.
• Good to Know: Most employers will give this anyway, and often paid. The real purpose of bereavement leave isn’t to give a theoretical right to take unpaid leave during this period. It’s to make it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee who takes this week off, or two weeks off, and that’s definitely a good thing.
• Panic Meter: 0%

Enhanced Protection for Pregnancy and New Mothers

• Current State: There are protections against dismissal of employees on maternity leave or dismissal for reasons relating to pregnancy, but at present there is little specific legal protection for new mothers, unless it can be framed as a sex discrimination claim. 
• What's Changing: It will become automatically unfair to dismiss someone during their pregnancy, during maternity leave, or after return from maternity leave. At the moment, women are protected from being made redundant during maternity leave; this will extend it. There's no further detail on this at present so we'll have to see what comes to light.
• Panic Meter: 0%

Zero-Hours Contracts

• Current State: There are no obligations on employers to provide any guaranteed hours or shifts for those under Zero Hour Contracts.
• What’s Changing: When it comes to Zero Hours Contracts the Bill is extremely lengthy and difficult to digest with much to still be determined. In short, there are three legs to this part of the Bill:
• the right to a guaranteed hours contract (subject to a short qualifying "reference period" which is thought to be 12 weeks)
• the right to reasonable notice of being required to work a shift
• the right to reasonable notice of a shift cancellation (basically the right to be paid if you’re not given reasonable notice of a shift cancellation)
• Good to Know: The right to be offered a guaranteed hours contract applies not just to zero hour contracts, but also to minimum hours’ contracts. This therefore prevents an employer from replacing its zero hour contracts with ‘one hour contracts’ or ‘two hour contracts’ to avoid this rule. It's also useful be to reminded here that the right to be offered a guaranteed hours contract is not the same as an obligation to accept it. There is still so much to be discussed here through consultation and we imagine it's going to get messy before decisions are made.
• Panic Meter: 30% - this could be a headache, BUT until we know further detail there's no point worrying.

The End of Fire and Rehire

• Current State: If an employee doesn't agree to a contractual change, employers can dismiss & re-engage (fire and rehire) them under the new terms.
• What’s Changing: This bill essentially makes “fire and rehire” an unfair dismissal unless the business is in dire financial straits.
• Panic Meter: 50% We're not panicking (just yet), but we are wondering how this is going to work in practice. Consider where as an organisation, you have benefits stated within your employment contracts and you potentially wish to change these - under these new rules you wouldn't be able to if the employee didn't agree - where will that leave employers? We'll be interested to see what comes of this, how the bigger picture is accounted for and what employers need to do in these types of circumstances. Let's face it, for a business to prove that they're about to go bankrupt tomorrow and have therefore made the decision to fire & re-hire - it's going to be a tough, if not pretty impossible defence.

Collective Redundancy Consultation

• Current State: Collective consultation is required when at least 20 employees face redundancy at a single “establishment" within a 90 day rolling period.
• What’s Changing: From 2026 (if it comes into force then) it will be 20 employees across the whole business—not just one location but across all locations. The problem for the employer here is that you may have separate redundancy or departmental restructures going on in different site locations which are engaged in completely separate redundancy exercises and may not be coordinated in any way. Under the new rules, does this mean the organisation would have to carry out one single consultation exercise across the different sites, or could it carry out three separate ones? And what if the 20 employee threshold is only triggered by the last proposal and some dismissals have already taken place? 
• What to Do: Mostly for large employers to ponder or those with multiple sites —but smaller players, take note for any future expansion plans!
• Panic Meter: 30%. No need to panic unless it's in your forecasts to be going through a large restructure in the next few years. Again we really need to understand the practicalities here before pressing that panic button.

Other Areas (no panic meter required!)

Gender Pay Gap & Menopause Reporting:  Expect more transparency requirements, especially for larger businesses (over 250 employees).

Trade Union Rules: Easier access for unions and simplified industrial action ballots.

You might be wondering what happened to things that haven't been mentioned, such as all the talk around a "Right to Switch Off" or "Single Worker Status". These are not provided for in the Bill, but the government has outlined that it still intends to progress these matters in other ways - again we'll have to wait and see what happens here.

Everything in the Bill when you look at the detail is still super hazy, with so much yet to be consulted on and confirmed. Until this happens, there really is little point in worrying about any of the above - it's a long way off. Sure, you need to be aware of what changes are likely to come into force and be mindful around these when looking at revamping any of your policies, contracts, ways of working etc, BUT until we know the detail and practicalities of how all of these changes are going to work, there's little point in doing much right now.

If you're looking at revamping your policies & processes and want to chat about what you should consider in light of the above, reach out to us at info@freshseed.co.uk. You can also use the button below to arrange a chat with us.