The Government has updated its timetable for implementing the Employment Rights Act 2025.

For employers, the important dates are now Thursday 1st October 2026, Friday 30th October 2026 and Friday 1st January 2027.

The timetable remains subject to parliamentary processes and some details will depend on secondary legislation made under powers contained in the Act.

Here are the ten developments that senior leaders should prioritise.

1        Six-month employment tribunal time limits

What is changing?

From Thursday 1st October 2026, the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims will increase from three months to six months.

Why does it matter?

Employers will face a longer period of uncertainty after dismissals, grievances, resignations and workplace disputes.

At present, the expiry of the three-month limitation period often provides a useful point at which employers can assess whether litigation is likely. Doubling the period will delay that assessment and may increase the number of claims. Employees will have more time to obtain advice, gather documents and decide whether to proceed.

The evidential consequences also matter. Memories fade quickly when managers handle dozens of employee issues each year. Witnesses may leave. Emails may be deleted under routine retention policies. Investigation notes may sit in personal folders rather than the central employee relations file.

Employers will also need to keep settlement authority open for longer and avoid the assumption that silence means a dispute has ended.

What should you do now?

Review document retention rules for employee relations matters. Relevant records should remain readily accessible for at least the full potential claim period, including any extension caused by Acas early conciliation.

Create a clear closure process for grievances, disciplinaries, redundancies and dismissals. The file should contain the decision, supporting evidence, meeting notes, correspondence and a record of the people involved.

Consider taking short witness statements or detailed managers’ accounts soon after significant decisions. A contemporaneous account is far more useful than asking a former manager, eight months later, what happened in a meeting they barely remember.

Revisit litigation reserves and reporting thresholds. A longer claims window may affect when finance teams can release provisions.

Can you wait?

No. Change your retention policies and case-closing procedures now.

Example

You dismiss a sales director in September 2026 following a disputed performance process. No claim appears by Christmas, and the business assumes the risk has passed. A claim issued in March 2027 may still be in time. By then, the decision-maker has joined a competitor and the Human Resources business partner is on maternity leave.

2        Informing workers of their right to join a trade union

What is changing?

From Friday 30th October 2026, employers will have a duty to inform workers of their right to join a trade union.

The detailed form, content, timing and frequency of the notification will depend on the implementation arrangements. Employers should therefore avoid inventing their own definitive wording before those details emerge.

Why does it matter?

It places trade union membership more visibly within ordinary workplace communications.

The duty applies in a wider employee relations environment in which unions will also gain stronger access and recognition rights. Organisations with little previous union involvement may therefore need to develop an industrial relations strategy.

Treat compliance as a governance issue. A badly drafted communication could create the impression that the organisation is discouraging membership.

What should you do now?

Identify every route through which the information may need to be given, including contracts, onboarding systems, employee portals and workforce notices.

Assign responsibility for implementation. Legal or HR should control the approved wording.

Brief senior leaders on the principle that workers may join a union whether or not the employer welcomes union involvement. The organisation’s response should remain lawful, neutral and consistent.

Can you wait?

The final communication can wait for the regulations or guidance. Mapping the systems and agreeing ownership should not.

Example

A non-unionised technology business adds the required notice to its onboarding portal. A manager tells a new starter that joining a union would be ‘unusual here’ and may affect career progression. The official notice may be compliant, but the manager’s intervention creates a much larger problem.

3        Trade union access and recognition reforms

What is changing?

From Friday 30th October 2026, the Government intends to strengthen trade unions’ workplace access rights and introduce the remaining reforms to statutory recognition and derecognition.

These include reforms relating to access and unfair practices during recognition and derecognition processes. The bargaining unit will also be frozen when an application is received. A bargaining unit is the group of workers that a union seeks to represent for collective bargaining.

Why does it matter?

Employers will have less room to reshape the workforce population after a recognition application arrives. Reorganisations, transfers or changes in reporting lines could attract scrutiny if they affect the proposed bargaining unit.

Access rights may also give unions greater opportunities to communicate with workers.

Employers will need protocols that preserve security, confidentiality, operational continuity and legitimate management rights without unlawfully obstructing access.

Recognition disputes move quickly. If you decide your strategy after receiving an application, it will be too late.

What should you do now?

Map the parts of the workforce where union interest is most likely. Look for employee relations concerns, pay compression, proposed restructuring, difficult shift arrangements or groups with a strong occupational identity.

Establish a response team involving HR, legal, operations and communications. Decide who will handle a recognition application and who may communicate with employees.

Review planned organisational changes. Ensure that there is a clear commercial rationale and documented decision-making, particularly where the changes could affect a potential bargaining unit.

Develop an access protocol covering locations, timing, data security, health and safety, confidential information and contact with workers who are not on duty.

Can you wait?

No. The rules may be technical, but the preparatory work is strategic.

Example

A logistics company receives a union recognition application covering warehouse operatives. It had already planned to divide the operation into two regional teams. Without clear records showing when and why that decision was made, the restructuring may appear designed to disrupt the bargaining unit.

4        Protection for union representatives and those taking industrial action

What is changing?

From Friday 30th October 2026, new rights and protections will apply to trade union representatives. Protection against detriment for taking industrial action will also be extended.

A detriment is a workplace disadvantage short of dismissal, such as denying promotion, removing overtime or imposing an unfavourable shift.

Why does it matter?

Risk will arise not only from formal disciplinary action but from everyday managerial decisions made during or after industrial action.

A manager may believe that withholding an opportunity from an employee who joined a strike rewards those who ‘supported the business’. That approach may prove expensive.

Union representatives may also require time, facilities or other support in circumstances specified by the new framework. Line managers will need to recognise when ordinary attendance or performance management overlaps with protected union activity.

What should you do now?

Audit policies on industrial action, attendance, bonus eligibility, allocating overtime, promotion and assessing performance.

Train managers to distinguish protected activity from misconduct. Participation in industrial action does not give an employee permission to intimidate colleagues or damage property, but managers must not treat lawful participation itself as misconduct.

Require central review of proposed sanctions or adverse decisions involving union representatives or workers who have taken industrial action.

Can you wait?

Drafting policies can follow the final detail. Manage education and escalation arrangements now.

Example

After a one-day strike, a supervisor removes striking employees from the next month’s voluntary overtime rota because non-strikers ‘deserve first refusal ‘. That decision may amount to an unlawful detriment.

5        Taking all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment

What is changing?

From Friday 30th October 2026, employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees.

The current proactive duty, introduced in October 2024, requires employers to take reasonable steps. Adding the word ‘all’ raises the standard. Employers will need to show that they identified the preventative measures reasonably available to them and implemented all those that were appropriate.

Why does it matter?

This is not simply a requirement to have a policy and deliver annual online training.

The focus will fall on assessing risk, practical prevention, leadership behaviour and evidence. What risks arise at conferences, client events, Christmas parties, overnight travel or in teams dominated by a powerful individual? What have you done about them?

Scrutinise workplace culture as well as formal compliance. Repeated complaints about one revenue-generating executive will not become less serious because everyone completed an e-learning module.

What should you do now?

Carry out a specific sexual harassment risk assessment. It should address working patterns, power imbalances, lone working, alcohol, travel, social events, online communications and contact with third parties.

Test reporting routes. Employees must have a realistic way to raise concerns outside their immediate management chain.

Review the quality of training. Managers need to understand intervention, escalation, confidentiality and protection against retaliation. Bystander training may be appropriate in higher-risk environments.

Create an evidence trail. Record risk reviews, decisions, training attendance, remedial action and the reasons for the measures selected.

Can you wait?

No. You should strengthen your arrangements.

Example

A consultancy identifies that junior employees regularly attend client dinners where alcohol is available, and the senior employee present also decides their performance rating.

Reasonable prevention may include event guidance, an alternative reporting contact, limits on expenses for alcohol and follow-up after higher-risk events.

6        Liability for third-party harassment

What is changing?

From Friday 30th October 2026, employers must not permit third parties to harass their employees.

A third party is someone other than the employer or one of its employees. It may include a customer, service user, supplier, contractor, visitor, patient or passenger.

An employer will permit harassment where the third party harasses the employee in the course of employment, and the employer failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it.

Why does it matter?

Customer-facing and public-facing organisations face obvious risks, but the duty extends much further.

A senior client may repeatedly make sexual remarks to an account manager. A contractor may target reception staff with racist abuse. A supplier’s representative may harass a procurement employee. Employers cannot dismiss such behaviour as an unfortunate feature of dealing with the public or preserving an important commercial relationship.

The challenge will be both cultural and contractual. Employees need authority to end an interaction. Managers need a process for restricting access, changing contacts, reporting incidents and, where necessary, ending a commercial relationship.

What should you do now?

Identify roles with material third-party exposure and assess the types of harassment that may arise.

Update customer and supplier standards. Contracts, service agreements and visitor rules should reserve appropriate rights to investigate behaviour, remove individuals and terminate arrangements.

Give employees clear reporting routes and practical options. Telling a receptionist to report abuse after the event is not enough if they have no authority to end the conversation at the time.

Decide who can suspend access or escalate action against a commercially important third party. Without an agreed process, revenue tends to win the first argument.

Can you wait?

No. Contractual amendments and operational protocols may take months to implement.

Example

A restaurant knows that a regular customer repeatedly makes sexual comments to young waiting staff. Moving each affected employee to another section does not address the risk.

The employer may need to warn the customer and refuse service if the behaviour continues.

7        Regulations specifying preventative steps

What is changing?

From Friday 30th October 2026, ministers will have a power to make regulations identifying evidence-based steps that employers must take to prevent sexual harassment.

The power does not, by itself, create a list of operative steps on that date. Regulations must still be made through the required parliamentary process.

Any specified measures will supplement, not replace, the wider duty to take all reasonable steps.

Why does it matter?

Employers must avoid two mistakes.

The first is assuming that no action is needed until regulations appear. The statutory duty will apply regardless.

The second is presenting anticipated measures as if they are already mandatory.

Follow the law that is in force while retaining enough flexibility to respond when regulations are made.

Future regulations may create a clearer compliance baseline. They are unlikely to become a complete safe harbour. An organisation may comply with every specified step and still need additional measures because of its particular risks.

What should you do now?

Build a preventative framework that can accommodate further prescribed measures. Avoid building a narrow checklist into policies or systems.

Monitor the development of the regulations and allocate responsibility for implementing them.

Continue to make risk-based decisions and record why you considered the measures appropriate.

Can you wait?

The specific regulatory changes can wait because the regulations do not yet exist. The broader prevention programme cannot.

Example

Future regulations might require a particular type of risk assessment or training. A nightclub, however, may still need additional controls addressing security staff, intoxicated customers and late-night transport because those risks are specific to its operation.

8        Fair pay, procurement and the two-tier code

What is changing?

During October 2026, the Government intends to bring forward regulations establishing the Fair Pay Agreement Adult Social Care Negotiating Body in England.

It also intends to reinstate the two-tier code in public procurement. The code is designed to ensure that private-sector employees working alongside staff transferred from the public sector receive terms and conditions that are no less favourable.

The timetable describes these measures as being introduced in October rather than assigning them the fixed commencement date of Friday 30th October.

Why does it matter?

Social care providers may face a more structured process for determining pay and employment conditions. That will affect workforce costs, commissioning assumptions and contract pricing.

Businesses bidding for public-sector work may also need to account for restrictions on creating a lower-cost second tier of employees after a transfer. Labour-cost models that depend on recruiting new starters on materially less favourable terms may no longer remain viable.

Public bodies will need to adapt procurement documents, evaluation methods and contract management.

What should you do now?

Social care organisations should model different labour-cost scenarios and examine whether existing contracts allow funding or pricing adjustments.

Public-sector suppliers should review bid assumptions, workforce models and due diligence processes. Procurement, finance and HR teams should work from the same set of employment-cost assumptions.

Can you wait?

Detailed drafting should await the regulations and procurement requirements. Financial modelling should begin now, particularly where bids or commissioning decisions will run beyond October.

Example

An outsourcing provider prices a three-year public contract on the assumption that future recruits will receive lower pension and sick-pay benefits than transferred employees.

Reinstatement of the two-tier code may remove that saving and turn an apparently attractive bid into a loss-making contract.

9        Six-month unfair dismissal protection and uncapped compensation

What is changing?

For dismissals taking effect from Friday 1st January 2027, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal will reduce from two years to six months.

The statutory cap on compensatory awards for unfair dismissal will also be removed.

Tribunals will still assess compensation by reference to the employee’s proven financial loss. Removal of the cap does not create automatic windfalls, but it increases exposure in cases involving high earners or lengthy periods out of work.

Existing claims that require no qualifying service, including discrimination and many automatically unfair dismissal claims, remain unaffected.

Why does it matter?

The most immediate consequence is that the practical period available to test suitability will shrink dramatically.

Recruitment quality, managing probation, and early performance intervention will become more important. A six-month probation period will no longer provide any margin for delay.

If you wait until the end of the probation period to decide whether an employee is suitable, they may already have acquired ordinary unfair dismissal protection before you begin any dismissal process.

The removal of the compensation cap increases the significance of dismissals involving senior executives, specialist professionals and employees with valuable long-term incentives.

You may also see more challenges to dismissal decisions because employees will reach the qualifying threshold much earlier and will have six months to bring a claim.

What should you do now?

Redesign probation processes. Set review points early enough to identify concerns, give feedback and allow a reasonable improvement period before six months’ service.

Improve recruitment records. Retain evidence of the role requirements, assessment process and information provided by the candidate.

Train managers to address underperformance promptly. The traditional approach of ignoring concerns for five months and asking HR to ‘extend probation’ is unlikely to age well.

Review settlement authority for higher-paid employees. Model the potential value of uncapped claims.

Ensure that dismissals after six months follow a fair process and rest on a potentially fair reason, even where the contract still describes the employee as probationary.

Can you wait?

No. Employees recruited from Wednesday 1st July 2026 will reach six months’ service by 1st January 2027. Recruitment and probation arrangements therefore require attention before the legislation commences.

Example

A chief operating officer joins in August 2026 on a six-month probation. Concerns emerge in December, but the board postpones the review until February. By then, the executive has more than six months’ service. A hurried dismissal without a proper process may result in an unfair dismissal claim with no statutory compensation cap.

10      Fire and rehire protections

What is changing?

From Friday 1st January 2027, new fire and rehire protections will take effect.

Fire and rehire means dismissing an employee and offering continued employment on changed contractual terms.

Under the Act, dismissal will be automatically unfair where the employer’s purpose is to impose certain restricted variations to core contractual terms, or to replace the employee with someone performing substantially the same role on altered terms.

A narrow exception will apply where the employer faces financial difficulties affecting its ability to continue as a going concern and could not reasonably avoid the variation. Even then, the Tribunal will consider the employer’s conduct and process.

Changes outside the restricted categories will not necessarily be automatically unfair, but ordinary unfair dismissal principles will continue to apply. Some details depend on regulations, including aspects of the protected terms.

Why does it matter?

Dismissal and re-engagement will no longer operate as a routine last resort for changing core terms.

Employers contemplating changes to pay, hours, holiday, pensions, shift arrangements or other contractual benefits will need to identify the legal category of each proposed change. They must then assess whether agreement can be reached without dismissal.

The reforms will affect restructures, harmonisation projects, post-acquisition integration and cost-saving programmes. They also strengthen the commercial case for proper consultation and workforce planning.

Timing matters. An employer should not assume that beginning consultation in 2026 avoids the new regime if dismissals take effect after 1st January 2027.

What should you do now?

Audit contractual terms throughout the workforce. Identify inconsistencies, historic arrangements and benefits that the business may seek to change.

Review change provisions in employment contracts, while recognising that broad flexibility clauses do not provide unlimited authority to impose detrimental changes.

Build more time into organisational change projects. Meaningful consultation, clear financial evidence, and exploring alternatives will become even more important.

For acquisitions, improve employment due diligence. Purchasers should understand inherited terms before assuming that employment terms can be harmonised quickly to reduce employment costs.

Require board or executive approval before any proposal involving dismissal and re-engagement. The paper should explain the business rationale, affected terms, alternatives, consultation strategy and legal risk.

Can you wait?

No. Any contractual change programme likely to continue into 2027 should be reviewed now. Final decisions on measures governed by future regulations may need to wait, but strategic planning cannot.

Example

After an acquisition, a buyer proposes reducing contractual holiday entitlement and changing shift patterns to align the two workforces. It assumes that it can consult briefly and dismiss any employees who refuse. From January 2027, that approach may create automatic unfair dismissal liability, depending on the terms affected and the final regulations.

Board Action Plan

Over the next twelve months, boards should focus on six connected priorities.

First, establish clear oversight.

Nominate an executive sponsor and schedule formal updates before October 2026 and January 2027. The board should know which reforms affect the organisation, who owns implementation and where final regulations are still awaited.

Second, approve the budget

Budget for management training, HR system changes and higher employment dispute costs. Social care providers and public-sector contractors should model workforce costs within future bids and contracts.

Third, strengthen management capability

Managers will need to handle probation, performance, union activity, industrial action and harassment risks with greater discipline. Training should use real operational scenarios rather than simply reciting legal rules.

Fourth, modernise policies and processes

Priorities include retaining documents, reviewing probation, preventing harassment, third-party conduct, union access, industrial action, and contractual change. Policies should identify decision-makers and escalation routes, not merely describe principles.

Fifth, improve employee relations intelligence

Boards should understand where union interest, workforce dissatisfaction or organisational change could create risk. Pay pressure, unpopular working arrangements and weak management often provide the context in which legal reforms become operational problems.

Finally, test litigation readiness

Significant employment decisions should leave a coherent record. You need documents that explain what you knew, what alternatives you considered, and why you acted as you did. With longer claim periods, earlier unfair dismissal protection and uncapped compensatory awards, weak evidence will become more costly.