The Employment Rights Bill is a hot topic of conversation among business owners and HR professionals, and with so many changes coming to employment law, there is much to digest.

Fortunately, the government has released more details on what the new legislation means for businesses. More information can be found in the Next steps to make work pay guidance document which provides details on how the Make Work Pay reforms will work.

In our mini blog series, we’ve broken down the jargon to explain the main elements of the new legislation that will apply to your business. If you missed our two previous blog updates, read a detailed overview of the Employment Rights Bill or a more detailed analysis of the Employment Rights Bill. Or keep reading for our latest episode.

Equality Action Plans

The Employment Rights Bill will allow the Government to make regulations requiring employers with 250 or more employees to develop and publish equality action plans showing the steps they are taking to reduce gender pay gaps and also the support they provide to employees going through the process. menopause. A recent Government amendment to the Bill proposes that the Government also have the power to require employers to publish action plans to support female employees suffering from menstrual problems and menstrual disorders.

After the first publication of a gender equality action plan, an employer will not be required to publish information more frequently than every 12 months.

Dismissal during pregnancy or during or after legal family leave

Protection against dismissal will be strengthened for pregnant women and those taking or returning from a period of statutory family leave, with further details specified in the regulations.

Rights from day one to family leave

Paternity leave will become a right from day one for eligible employees, instead of currently requiring 26 weeks of service on the relevant date. Similarly, unpaid parental leave will also become a right from day one for eligible employees, rather than requiring one year of service.

The existing right to two weeks of parental bereavement leave following the death of a child under 18 or stillbirth will be replaced by more general bereavement leave, which will apply to the loss of a larger group of people. Just like the current provision for parental bereavement leave, bereavement leave will be a right from day one.

The regulations will specify exactly which relationships will be covered and will ensure that, where the deceased person is not a child, the minimum period of leave will be one week. When the deceased person is a child, the minimum duration of leave will remain fixed at two weeks.

Statutory parental bereavement pay will continue to be paid in the event of the death of a child under 18, but there is no provision for a wider category of bereavement leave to be paid.

While many employers already offer a period of paid compassionate leave on a discretionary basis, it is questionable how often employees will choose to use family leave. In practice, because bereavement leave is unpaid, bereaved employees are more likely to take a period of statutory (paid) sick pay if they do not feel well enough to work in reason for their loss.

Flexible working

Since 6 April 2024, employees have had the right from day one to make a request for flexible working under the Employment Rights Act. This includes requests to work from home or work reduced hours.

An employer can currently refuse a request on one or more of the legal grounds prescribed by the Act. Accepted reasons include:

• Additional costs for the employer
• Adverse effect on ability to meet customer demand
• Unable to reorganize work among existing staff

The wording of the law has always suggested that the criterion is subjective on the part of the employer. In other words, if the employer believes If one or more of the reasons apply, then the criterion is satisfied. It does not matter whether the belief is reasonable or not, as long as the employer sincerely believed it.

The Government previously pledged to make flexible working a default norm from day one, but the Employment Rights Bill does not go that far and the changes it introduces are much more subtle .

The first change is to clarify that when an employer refuses a request for flexible working, it must be reasonable for them to do so. This obviously makes it more difficult for an employer to refuse a request for flexible working by introducing a “reasonableness” requirement.

Other changes include that employers will now have to explain why they consider it reasonable to refuse a request and that there will be a new requirement to consult with the employee before rejecting a request for flexible working.

Work flexibility legislation was the change that worried employers the most. Much to the relief of many business owners, these changes are nowhere near as far-reaching as many feared.

Based on the new information, as long as employers take the time to evaluate any flexible working request they receive and can clearly articulate why it is reasonable to refuse anything that is not feasible for them, they should still be able to make the right decisions for their business. without fear of recovery.

Statutory sick pay from day one; removal of the lower income threshold

The Employment Rights Bill makes sweeping changes to the SSP, including ordering it to be payable from the first day of illness rather than from the fourth day, as is currently the case .

The lower earnings cap for PAS eligibility will also be removed, meaning all employees will be entitled to some form of PAS, regardless of their earnings level (although lower earners will receive a fixed percentage of their normal earnings, rather than the full rate of the SSP).

Next steps

We are close to understanding how the Government’s employment law reforms will work, but as much of the detail of the Employment Rights Bill depends on regulations and codes of practice which will be placed under legislation, there is still much more information to be obtained. come.

If you need a team of HR experts at your side to help you prepare for all the upcoming changes and to provide you with all the HR documents you need, do not hesitate to consult our HR advice service.