Preparing for upcoming employment legislation changes
One of our priorities is staying ahead of legislative changes to make sure our clients can adapt smoothly, maintain compliance, and support a positive work environment.
The UK will soon be seeing several significant updates in employment law that will impact your businesses.
These changes aren’t just legal obligations but are opportunities for businesses to improve their employee experience, retain top talent, and foster a fairer workplace.
Here is a round of up of what you can do to prepare for some of the upcoming changes.
1. Prepare for Increased Compliance:
Expected updates to employment legislation include stricter regulations around working conditions and employee rights. Ensure you have expert advice to maintain compliant practices, and make sure your employment contracts, policies and practices are updated to reflect legislative changes.
2. Create a probation process – and follow it:
We already know legislation will be implemented to give your team day 1 rights to unfair dismissal, and so a fair and transparent probationary period and process will be critical for you and your team member to rely upon should things not work out for a new hire. We know most employers have a fairly relaxed approach to probationary periods as they can currently dismiss relatively easily those with less than two years’ service. Don’t wait until the legislation comes in, take the time now to plan how this can work for you and your business while there is time to review your options.
3. Get your house in order:
Now is the time to document any performance or behavioural concerns you have in your team as you will need to follow a robust process in future. With increasing costs and greater employee protections coming, it is important you have a skilled and motivated team in place who will deliver results for your business.
4. Plan for higher employer costs:
With the Employers National Insurance rate rising to 15% from April 2025 and the increase to National Living Wage to £12.21 per hour, businesses need to budget and plan for the additional costs. Increasing the Employer Allowance for Employers National Insurance to £10,500 will offer some relief, but it’s essential to budget for the net effect on labour costs.
5. Manage workforce changes cautiously:
Resist making hasty budget cuts in talent acquisition or staff investment. Though the budget pressures may tempt businesses to scale back, remember that workforce quality directly impacts long-term growth. Consider your strategy to drive performance and maintain engagement while managing costs. We can support you to consider your options within your budget, taking into account your specific employee demographic.
Please speak to us for support with any of our recommendations, or other concerns affecting your business right now.
