Employment law updates, people management guides, and HR strategy — written for UK business owners and managers, not HR specialists.
The most significant reform to UK employment law in a generation comes into force this year. Most SMEs are not ready. Here is what is changing, what it means for your business, and where to start.
Key changes and what
they mean for your business
Return-to-work conversations are one of the most effective tools for managing absence. They are also one of the most consistently avoided. Here is why, and what to do about it.
If your managers treat HR as the answer to every people question, the problem is not the managers. It is the absence of clarity about who owns what. RACI fixes that.
Most SMEs think their HR is in reasonable shape until they look closely. A structured audit changes that. Here is how to run one in an afternoon and what to do with the results.
Most businesses confuse what they say about themselves as an employer with what is actually true. The gap between the two is where retention problems live.
SSP increased to £123.25 per week (or 80% of AWE if lower) from 6 April 2026. But the rate is only one part of what managers need to understand to handle absence legally and consistently.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 is the most significant reform to UK employment law in a generation. It affects dismissal, flexible working, zero-hours contracts, trade union rights, and more. Most SMEs are not ready. Here is what is changing, what it means in practice, and where to start.
The Act was passed in 2025 and its provisions are being phased in through 2026 and 2027. The changes most relevant to SMEs fall into four areas.
First, the unfair dismissal qualifying period is being reduced — but not to day one. The original proposal for day-one unfair dismissal rights was dropped before the Act became law. Instead, from 1 January 2027, the qualifying period reduces from two years to six months. Until then, the two-year qualifying period still applies. This is still a significant change: from January 2027, employees need only six months of service before they can bring an unfair dismissal claim, placing a premium on good process from the very start of employment.
Second, the right to request flexible working has been strengthened. Employers can still decline requests, but the statutory reasons for doing so have been tightened and the process for handling requests has been updated.
Third, zero-hours contract workers now have stronger rights to guaranteed hours if they work regular patterns. For businesses using zero-hours arrangements, this requires a review of whether those arrangements remain appropriate.
Fourth, protection from third-party harassment has been extended under amendments to the Equality Act 2010. Employers now have a stronger duty to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment of employees by clients, customers, and contractors.
From 1 January 2027, the unfair dismissal qualifying period reduces from two years to six months. Until then, the two-year qualifying period still applies. Best practice now: follow a fair, documented process for every dismissal regardless of length of service. Good process costs nothing extra.
If your disciplinary and grievance procedures reference the two-year qualifying period, they need updating. Employment contracts that reference probationary periods need to be reviewed to ensure the language is consistent with the new rights. Flexible working policies need updating to reflect the revised statutory process.
The most practical starting point is to audit your existing HR documents against the new requirements. The areas to focus on are your disciplinary procedure, your grievance procedure, your flexible working policy, and your employment contracts. For businesses using zero-hours arrangements, a separate review of those arrangements is needed.
If you do not have formal documented procedures in place, the Employment Rights Act 2025 makes this more urgent than ever. A fair process that is not documented is very difficult to evidence in a tribunal claim.
Our Core Policies pack has been updated to reflect the Employment Rights Act 2025. All seven policies include the relevant changes and are ready to use. See what is included →
The Employment Rights Act 2025 represents a shift in the balance of rights between employers and employees. This does not mean that managing people has become impossible. It means that the fundamentals of good HR practice, which have always been the right approach, are now more important than ever. Fair process, documented decisions, and consistent management are not just legally safer. They are also better for business.
Return-to-work conversations are one of the most effective tools for managing absence. Research consistently shows that consistent return-to-work processes reduce absence rates by 20-40%. They are also one of the most consistently skipped management tasks in UK SMEs. Here is why, and what to do about it.
The most common reason managers skip return-to-work conversations is not laziness. It is discomfort. Most managers have not been trained to have these conversations and are worried about asking the wrong question, appearing intrusive, or making the situation worse.
A second common reason is inconsistency. If the business has no clear expectation that return-to-work conversations happen after every absence, managers make their own judgement calls. Some do them, some do not, and the absence culture reflects that inconsistency.
A return-to-work conversation is not an interrogation. It is a short, structured check-in that communicates three things: that the business noticed the absence, that it cares about the employee, and that absence has a process.
The six-stage script we use covers: a genuine welcome back, an open question about the absence, a check for any workplace factors, confirmation of fitness for duties, a fit note check where relevant, and a close with an offer of support. The whole conversation takes five minutes. It is not a difficult conversation. It is a human one.
The Return-to-Work Conversation Script is one of the 34 templates available free from our resource library. Download it here →
Consistency requires three things: a clear expectation that every return to work triggers a conversation, a simple tool that gives managers confidence, and a record that keeps the process visible. Without all three, the conversation becomes optional and the culture of absence continues.
The Bradford Factor is a useful support tool for managers, not as a punitive score but as a conversation prompt. A manager who can see a pattern in someone's absence data has something concrete to discuss. That makes the conversation easier, not harder.
If your managers treat HR as the answer to every people question, the problem is not the managers. It is the absence of clarity about who owns what. The RACI framework fixes that in an afternoon.
In most SMEs, the boundaries between what managers own and what HR owns are never explicitly defined. Managers fill that gap conservatively. If they are not sure whether something is their call, they pass it to HR. This is rational behaviour in the absence of clarity. It is also expensive, because every referral costs time from both the manager and HR.
The most common examples are return-to-work conversations after short absences, first-stage performance conversations, informal feedback on conduct, and probationary review discussions. These are all things a manager should own. Most managers in SMEs do not know that, because no one has ever told them.
RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. Applied to HR, it answers a simple question for every people management task: who does it, who owns the outcome, who needs to be involved, and who needs to know.
A completed RACI chart for HR covers around 20 common tasks and takes roughly two hours to build with input from HR and the management team. The value is not in the chart itself. It is in the conversation that produces it, which forces explicit decisions about where management responsibility sits.
The HR RACI Framework template is included in the Complete HR Toolkit pack and in the free 34-template download. Download it here →
In most SMEs, managers should own: all return-to-work conversations, first-stage absence welfare conversations, informal conduct feedback, probationary reviews, and day-to-day performance conversations. HR should own: formal disciplinary and grievance proceedings, policy interpretation, complex absence cases, and anything with potential legal exposure.
The boundary between the two is where most of the confusion lives. Drawing that boundary explicitly, and giving managers the tools to work within it, removes most of the referral traffic that clogs HR's time.
Most SMEs think their HR is in reasonable shape until they look closely. A structured audit changes that picture quickly. Here is how to run one and what to do with the results.
There are two common reasons. The first is that nobody wants to find problems they then have to fix. The second is that most business owners assume their HR is broadly compliant because nothing has gone wrong yet. Neither is a sound basis for managing risk.
Employment tribunal claims cost an average of £8,500 to defend, even when the employer wins. The reputational and management time costs are additional. Most of the cases that reach tribunal involve failures that would have been visible on a proper audit months or years earlier.
A structured audit looks at eight areas: employment documentation, policy compliance, absence management, performance management, onboarding and offboarding processes, manager capability, HR systems and data, and culture and retention signals. Each area is scored and the scores reveal both the compliance risks and the operational inefficiencies.
The audit is not just about finding problems. It is about prioritising them. Not everything that is missing or imperfect needs fixing immediately. The audit tells you what is urgent, what is important but not urgent, and what is worth addressing when capacity allows.
The HR Audit Scorecard is one of the 34 templates available free from our resource library. It takes around two hours to complete and gives you a prioritised view of where your HR currently stands. Download it here →
The output of a good audit is a prioritised action list, not a to-do list of everything that is imperfect. The highest priority items are those that represent active legal risk. The second priority is the quick wins: things that are easy to fix and have visible impact. The third priority is the structural improvements that take longer but compound over time.
Most businesses that complete a proper audit are surprised by how much they can improve quickly. The compliance risks are often fewer than feared. The operational inefficiencies are usually more significant than expected.
Most businesses confuse what they say about themselves as an employer with what is actually true. The gap between those two things is where retention problems live.
Employer brand is the external projection: what you say in job adverts, on your careers page, and in interviews about what it is like to work for you. Employer story is the reality: what your employees would actually tell a friend who was thinking of joining.
In a large business with a dedicated employer brand function, significant effort goes into closing the gap between the two. In most SMEs, employer brand is either absent or aspirational, and the employer story is unknown because no one has ever asked.
When the story employees tell does not match the brand the business projects, two things happen. First, you attract candidates who are drawn to a promise that does not match the reality, which leads to early exits and wasted recruitment spend. Second, existing employees who recognise the gap lose confidence in the business's self-awareness, which erodes trust.
Retention problems that look like pay problems are often story problems. People leave when reality falls short of expectation. Closing that gap is cheaper and more sustainable than competing on salary.
The most reliable method is a facilitated workshop with a mixed group of employees: different roles, different tenures, different levels. Eight questions, roughly 90 minutes, and a note-taker who is not the facilitator. The questions focus on why people joined, what keeps them, what they would tell a friend, and what the business does that competitors do not.
The themes that appear consistently across participants are your real employer story. They are also the most credible recruitment message you have, because they are true.
The Employer Story Workshop Facilitator Guide is included in the free 34-template download. Download it here →
SSP increased to £123.25 per week (or 80% of AWE if lower) from 6 April 2026. But the rate is only one part of what managers need to understand to handle absence legally and consistently.
If something in these articles resonates with a situation in your business, a short conversation is usually the most useful next step.
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