The Employment Rights Bill 2024 is due to come into effect by 2026, promising a wealth of new and extended workers’ rights.

In this article, we tell you everything you need to know about what’s coming, what you need to do to prepare for what we think will be some really positive changes.

So what’s new?

Broadly speaking, the changes bring more workers’ rights and protections re: leave, dismissal, discrimination and flexible working.

Protections 

The Bill will remove the 2-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal, which basically means short-service dismissal won’t be an option. It’s likely to be replaced with a statutory probation period of approx 9 months. For employers, this means you need to get those hiring decisions right first time and embed new team members in your culture from day dot, because it won’t be as easy to change your mind. This is good practice though – failed hires are a sunk cost that you want to avoid, and this should help you do so.

Another big one is no more ‘fire and re-hire’, with more limits on when and how an employer is able to ‘fire and rehire’ (or replace) its workforce and a new framework for ‘collective redundancy consultations’. A popular cost-cutting measure in the Covid era, ‘fire and rehire’ was often used as a sneaky way to force a new contract onto employees – the Bill says no more.

Other protections include what seems to be the effective banning of zero-hours contracts, a greater duty to protect staff from sexual harassment, and (for big companies) an ‘equality action plan’. Pregnant women will also be protected from dismissal during their return to work, and for six months after. This should help to reduce the ‘motherhood penalty’ and gender pay gap by making work more viable for mothers.

Leave eligibility 

There are a few bits of news on the leave front. Low-income earners will be able to get statutory sick pay, which should help to tackle presenteeism.

Bereavement leave will also be extended to cover more people and types of relationship, a welcome nod to the shift in family dynamics and setups in the modern UK.

With regard to parental leave too, this becomes a ‘day one’ right, meaning maternity, paternity and unpaid parental leave can be taken straight away, with no minimum service term. Paternity leave can also be taken after shared parental leave.

For employers, these changes should require just simple updates to leave policies, with some awareness-raising to ensure uptake. 

Flexible working

This is the biggie. The new Bill makes flexible work arrangements available from day one, and staff can put in a request twice a year. It also sets out the 8 statutory reasons a flexible work request can be denied. If you don’t already have plans in place for how flexible working can be applied in different roles, teams and departments, you should be thinking about it now. As we’ve said before, flexible employers are highly attractive, so while this may initially be a hassle in some industries, it’s better to get on board and be ready!

Key takeaways

The plan is to ‘get Britain working’ and ‘make work pay’ through labour market reforms. We think it’s a step forward in reshaping the employment landscape and relationships for a new generation. A lot of the headline changes are things we’ve talked about before and that we see in place already with many of our clients.  

While of course it’s not law until it’s law, and it’s all subject to change until that happens, we think the future is looking good!