Employment Rights Act (ERA) – Don’t Get Bitten
19 January 2026Are you still thinking that the ERA is just another routine piece of regulation and not something to be too concerned about?
If that’s how you are looking at it, you may be about to get bitten.
The Government’s own analysis of the economic impact of the Act states ‘‘we expect the policies within the Act to impose a direct annual cost on business of around £1 billion per year.”
The ERA is a generational set of changes in employment law – some 20 plus of them over the next two years – that fundamentally reshapes employment rights and poses significant challenges for your existing people management practices.
Let’s highlight just a few of them and their potential impact on your business:
▶️ Entitlement to Statutory Sick Pay from day one of an absence – from April 2026 – means an increase in costs and potentially also an increase in short term absence. Are your absence management procedures fit to deal with this and understood by your line managers?
▶️ Unfair Dismissal protection after six months’ employment – from January 2027 – means removing poor hires becomes much more challenging. How reliable is your hiring process? How structured is your management of probation periods? How robust is your management of performance issues?
▶️ New rights of access for trade unions and a simplified statutory recognition process mean that union organizing will be much easier. If that’s an outcome you would prefer to avoid, are your communication and engagement processes robust enough to pick up on and address employee concerns before these become organizing issues?
It’s not a case of whether or not you agree with the new employment rights, it’s a matter of whether your business is prepared for them.
What is the best way to do this?
✅ Now is the time to undertake a comprehensive risk review of your people management practices and understand what you need to update in order to be ready for the changes that the ERA brings.
At the Resourceful People Group Ltd we work with organisations to reduce people risk and build people strategies that support delivery of business goals. We are not lawyers, we are not an HR helpline, we are simply very experienced HR Directors, working on fractional basis, with a track record of helping businesses manage change in HR and employee relations. Message Steve Botterill or Mike Hood for a discussion on getting ready for the ERA.
