Changes To Employment Legislation Are Coming Into Effect in 2026.

The government has recently published an update on when we can expect the changes to employment legislation set out in the Employment Rights Bill to come into effect.

One of the key changes talked about in the press has been a proposal to ban employers from using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that prevent staff from talking about workplace harassment, including sexual harassment. This is due to be added into the Employment Rights Bill and the scope of the ban will be clarified. However, it is anticipated that there may be an exception to the ban where a victim of harassment requests an NDA to protect their confidentiality.

Employment Legislation: The key changes to keep an eye out for in April 2026 are:

• The 3 waiting days for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will fall away, meaning that staff will be entitled to receive SSP from the first day of sickness. In addition, there will no longer be a requirement for staff to meet the lower earnings income threshold for National Insurance contributions (currently £125 per week) in order to be eligible for SSP.

• The entitlement to take paternity leave and unpaid parental leave will become a day 1 right. At the moment, staff need 6 months’ continuous service by the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth to be eligible for paternity leave and 1 year of continuous service to be eligible for unpaid parental leave.

• For employers who don’t follow the rules on collective redundancy consultation (which currently apply where it is proposed that 20 or more roles are redundant), the maximum protective award that a Tribunal could award will be increased from 90 days pay per employee to 180 days pay per employee.

• There may be changes to rules on whistleblowing, including a requirement for the disclosure to actually be in the public interest rather than the staff member believing it to be in the public interest. However, commentators have indicated that these changes may not be made.

From October 2026, the key changes to look out for are:

• Employers will have a duty to inform staff of their right to join a trade union. It is expected that this will become something that should be included in an employee’s statement of terms (or contract of employment).

• Employers will no longer be able to use a process commonly referred to as ‘fire and rehire’ when negotiating with staff about changes to their contracts. It will become automatically unfair to dismiss an employee because they won’t agree to a change to their contract even if they are immediately offered reinstatement on a new contract. However, there may be some exceptions to this which may restrict the rule to changes to specific types of contractual terms (e.g. change to pay or pensions) and it will be a defence for employers to show that the changes were necessary due to serious and imminent financial distress.

• Employers will have an increased duty to protect staff from harassment. At present, there is a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment – for example by having an appropriate policy, training staff and enforcing the policy consistently. This will be increased to a duty to take ALL reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment – for example by doing risk assessments for the workplace and for social events. There will also be a duty to protect staff from harassment by third parties such as customers, patients, service users and members of the public.

• We anticipate that the ban on NDAs may come into force in October 2026 alongside the increased duties for harassment, but this is to be confirmed.

There are further changes planned, which have been moved to 2027, including plans to extend bereavement leave and introduce rules limiting the use of zero hours contracts. 

The most significant of these for many employers may be the removal of the requirement for employees to have 2 years’ service in order to claim unfair dismissal which was due to come into force in October 2026 but is now expected in 2027.

Interestingly, the House of Lords have recommended a change which would see a requirement for 6 months’ continuous service before an employee can claim unfair dismissal – instead of this becoming a day 1 right. This will be carefully considered, but the government may decide to stick with their stated intention of making unfair dismissal a day 1 right as this was in their manifesto. We will be keeping a close eye on this.

Please visit Lords votes for changes to Employment Rights Bill – UK Parliament for more information

As always, we will keep an eye on changes and we will be holding our annual client update in November 2025.

For more information please contact a member of our team at: [email protected] or complete our contact form HERE