Today sees, what the Government have hailed to be, ‘the biggest upgrade to rights at work for a generation’ with 28 new or enhanced laws and rules to benefit workers’ and employees’ rights. However, what may be good for the man and woman in employment, may be a curse on employers, especially those small enterprises who do not have the money or resources to implement all these changes.
Probably the most significant change is the right to claim some benefits or rights from Day One of employment.
At the moment, employees have the right not to be unfairly dismissed but have to have at least two years’ continuous service in order to claim that right. This time period has been flexible in the past and a decade or so ago it was one year. This tweaking significantly effects the number of people making Employment Tribunal (ET) claims and the Ministry of Justice can manipulate the level of claims entering the ET system. With no qualifying period at all, the number of potential claims will rise significantly.
However, the new right conferred on employees/workers may be balanced by a new right for employers to impose a nine month probation period when staff can be sacked without the employer following a full process.
Another Day One right will be to claim Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) from day one of being off work, ill. At the moment, there is a waiting period and SSP is only paid on the fourth day. The reasoning for the three day wait was (probably) to stop employees from taking multiple short absences, which were almost impossible to prove were legitimate. If you didn’t go in, you didn’t get paid. From 2026, staff can take off and be paid for their duvet days, hangovers and Monday morning blues in the knowledge that they will receive, at least some of their daily wage.
Previously, lower paid workers were unable to claim SSP (sub £123/week). This lower limit will be abolished and replaced by a new lower level payment.
Paternity, (unpaid) parental and bereavement leave will also take effect from Day One.
Want to work from home, only school hours or Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? Then the employer will have limited reasons to deny such requests. Imagine, as an employer, offering a nine to five, five day a week job to a successful candidate only to find them in HR on their first day asking to work part-time!
Most of these new provisions are due to take effect in the autumn of 2026 and there will be plenty of consultation in the meantime, which may mean some of these provisions will be watered down. But, with a government continually talking about ‘growth’ as the way out of the country’s financial and economic malaise, giving the population the right to work less hard is probably not the right way of going about it.
More to follow…