Employment Law Updates for Dum Dums, like me

2024 has been a year of highs and lows…?

Highs: RayGun. Jools Lebron. Moo Deng. Sacking off the tories.

Lows: Kaos not getting another series. The Ticketmaster / Oasis saga. Me having to throw away jeans that no longer fit.

Throughout brat summer, I spent a lot of time reading up on all the new employment legislation that was headed our way this autumn. Day-one rights, the Four day week, the ‘Right to switch off’ etc. I was flooded with emails from various HR big-bods telling me that everything is going to change and that Companies who don’t prepare are up shit creek (Insert joke about how a shit creek is literally any body of H20 that Southern Water has access to).

So imagine my disappointment when I finally laid eyes on the new ‘Employment Rights Bill’ and found out that, in fact, barely any of it is actually happening this year (if ever). All I can say is, I know how those kids at the Willy Wonka Experience felt. I want my ￡10 back.

So you can unclench your cheeks. And without further ado, let me unveil the colossal anticlimax that is… October ‘24 Employment Law Updates.?

Things that actually changed…

Fire and rehire

Since July, there’s been a Code of Practice on how employers should (or rather, shouldn’t) do the Fire and rehire thing. Let me be clear, it’s not law yet, but it’s an advised practice.

The code states that employers need to have a bloody good reason for doing it, and need to show that they’ve really tried their best to reach an agreement and avoid F&R. It should be a last resort… But… you had to do that anyway? So I don’t know why they’re making a song and dance about it now.?

And… in the future

The future plan is to make it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for refusing to accept a new contract (even if you plan to rehire them). If you wanna do that, businesses will have to prove that if they didn’t do it, the company would go bust … AKA: near impossible to do.

It’s a bit confusing because ‘automatic unfair dismissal’ has always been reserved for the real Shits of the business world - discrimination, whistleblowing fallout, health and safety negligence, other serious stuff. But now it includes times where someone just didn’t want to switch to a new benefits scheme. Ahh well. I don’t reckon it’ll survive or maybe it won’t even happen, it’s too annoying.

What should you do now? Well, take things out of your contracts that don’t need to be in there and put them in policies instead! But remember, taking things out of contracts for existing team members still requires consultation so you’re still not out of the woods.

Trade Union Rights and Simplified Strike Ballots

Let’s just get through this bit. It’s really confusing and boring, sorry…?

The controversial law that mandated ‘minimum service levels’ during strike action is set to be scrapped. Fair enough, this is a Labour government so what did we expect! Whatever.

‘Ave a look at this lovely graph:

You can see that union membership is at around half of what it was at its peak (no surprises of when that was). We’re in ‘war level’ union membership - that’s quite interesting innit! Anyway, membership is obviously something that unions are concerned about, and they want to make it easier for more people to join… and they have!

A lower threshold (10% of your workforce) for union support will trigger statutory recognition (it was 50%),statutory recognition means that your company has to officially ‘recognise’ and cooperate with that union. Unions will also now have the right to access workplaces for recruitment, training and meetings (and they can access digital stuff too).?

Finally, strike ballot thresholds will change. It used to be you had to have a majority of the people eligible to vote to call a stroke, now it’s just at least the majority of the people who actually turn up to vote.?

That's enough of that...

Expanded Protections Against Sexual Harassment

Ok, pay attention to this one. Approximately 67% of women in the UK have experienced sexual harassment at work.?

Workplace sexual harassment is different to criminal harassment. Here, I’m talking about unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. And that's subjective.?

Now, employers have a new duty to take “reasonable steps” to prevent workplace sexual harassment for all workers. This is expected to extend further by 2026, broadening to “all reasonable steps” and covering third-party harassment, making employers liable for harassment by clients and other third parties. TBH I think you should just do this now too, why not eh?

What’s reasonable? Well that’s for you to decide, but I’d recommend:

• Training for your whole company
• Do a risk assessment?
• Signpost all workers to your complaint and reporting procedure
• Have an express term about harassment of any kind in contracts with clients
• Take regular team pulse surveys and get feedback on how safe your culture feels

What happens if you don’t do anything? There’s a 25% uplift on sexual harassment claims if you didn’t take reasonable steps to stop it happening in the first place.?

Sick pay from day one of sickness

I always found the waiting period for SSP to be stupid - either pay us don’t! Anyway, finally, the waiting period for SSP is being removed. They’ve also removed that crazy thing that said 'If you earn below the Lower Earnings Limit you can’t get sick pay'. What the hell was that about?

“I’ll tell you who doesn’t need additional pay support eh? It’s people who earn less than ￡123 a week, the greedy bastards!” A quote there from Kemi B.

Flexible working

The big change already happened in April (see my previous post for that). But there are two tweaks…?

Any request for flexible working on the grounds of childcare pretty much immediately engages sex discrimination for mums and dads. For a business to refuse a request of this kind, they’d need to provide evidence at a really high level to demonstrate that it’s really really not possible.

Quick but really important thing to note:

Flexible working on the grounds of childcare could be loads of things, it might be working less hours or changing the start/finish times etc. What it isn’t, however, is ‘I want to work at home so I can look after my children’.?

You're either working, or you are looking after your children. You can’t do both in the same hours. I’d recommend super flexibility in hours, lots of empathy, and clear expectations on deliverables for working parents, but simply being at home during normal hours ain’t it. Imagine if a carpenter came to do some work at your house and they brought their child along with them, they spent half the day making your millennial favourite rattan built-in wardrobe, and the other half tending to the child, then charged you for a full day.?

Things we thought were happening but… AREN’T...

Scrapping Zero Hours Contracts

OMG we’re gonna ban zero hours contracts… jks jks.

What is going to happen instead is that zero and low hours workers will have the right to be offered guaranteed regular hours.?

I don’t know if you use zero hour contracts, but they’re used in places like beach bars. Sunny day - yes please come in! Shite weather - don’t bother!?

With this new thing, people on these types of contract will be entitled to be offered the same hours, or possibly even the same shifts, as they've worked in the most recent reference period. We don’t actually know what this reference period is, which is very important… it could be 12 weeks, could be a month, or something else. But you all know what the weather’s like over here - this could be a total beach slap for those bars…

There are some exceptions, if the contract is:

• For a specific task?
• Only needed until a specific event (Christmas retail workers)
• Or if the worker is fairly dismissed (Redundancy?)

If the employer doesn’t offer the guaranteed hours, the worker then has 3 months to make their claim (the cap hasn’t been confirmed yet, but if it’s low, I suspect employers will take their chances).

These workers will also be entitled to reasonable notice of shift changes and cancellation. Compensation for cancelled shifts won’t be more than the lost income and they won’t be entitled to be paid twice for a shift (even if the shift time had been changed). Most of these jobs are low paid so, nobody’s ever going to realistically make a claim…Which leads me to my next hot take…

What a complete waste of f***ing time.?

Who has the time to get their head around all of these technicalities (it’s hard enough for me!). Also, most reasonable and good employers aren’t after exploiting people, and the employers that do exploit are gonna bend the rules regardless.?

Fair Work Agency

If there’s something strange, in your company, who you gonna call… FAIR WORK AGENCY!

An employment version of Ghost Busters, the Fair Work Agency, will be set up to investigate employers for a wide range of issues, from holiday pay to discriminatory practices, with authority to impose penalties. The aim is to reduce individual enforcement burdens by actively policing compliance for areas like minimum wage, sick pay, and worker protections.?

But, FWA, you’re not here yet. So until it happens I’ll just assume you’re a tribute band to rap favourites, Fellas With Attitude.

Day One Unfair Dismissal

Right, can everyone STOP panicking about this? It’s actually, really, not that big a deal.

Service requirements for unfair dismissal have changed a lot over the years, government depending. They’ve been 2 years for ages now, it was probably time we had a change. The proposal is to remove that 2 year period where you could get away with dismissing someone because you don’t like the smell of the haddock risotto that they always heat up in the office kitchen (fair, TBH).

At the moment, probationary periods have no legal significance. There’s no real change other than company benefits or notice period, but all rights are the same. As soon as this is actually introduced, it’ll force employers to deal with issues fast - as it should be. However, it also looks like there’ll be an increase in the limit for a maximum acceptable probationary period (looks like they’ll say 9 months, but could be a year).?

By the way, the two year thing has never been relevant for things that qualify for ‘automatic unfair dismissal’. You’ll just need to manage probationary periods more actively.?

I don’t think it’s actually going to make any difference for good employers. It’s probably just going to add more strain to an already broken tribunal system, and might deter businesses from hiring. But on a positive note it’s always good to give workers a little extra protection, and it’s about time we started taking our recruitment and probationary processes more seriously anyway!

Bereavement Leave

This already exists, but there are plans to broaden the qualifying ‘circumstances’, perhaps to include grandparents, spouses, pets - we don’t know yet! This is one for next year.

Neo-Natal Leave

From April 2025, it’ll be a day one right for new parents to take Neonatal Leave (and 26 weeks of service for pay). This will allow parents to take up to 12 weeks of leave, in addition to their existing leave entitlements, if their baby receives neonatal care that has lasted for at least 7 consecutive days in their first month. Good.?

Parental and Paternity Leave

Parental and paternity leave will be a day one right. Pay stays the same though. Still crap.

Things that we thought would be in the bill, but weren’t…

Finally, there were a few changes that everyone was ‘giving it the biggun’ about… and now they’re nowhere to be seen (reminds me of the dating game).

• Right to switch off - that’s now just going to be a ‘code of practice’ rather than anything legal. Also, question, how TF will it actually work?
• Ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting - This was going to be for large employers, haven’t heard another peep about this.
• Single worker status - That's a huge subject, as I'm sure you all know, we've got employees, some who are self employed, and workers. Labour were going to sack off the worker thing and just say ‘you’re all employees’. No idea how they’ll do that, I’m glad they haven’t mentioned it again because I don’t want to deal with that AT ALL. What a? faff.

So basically…

Don’t worry. Focus on the anti-sexual harassment thing, and start gently reviewing your policies for those bits that are on the horizon… Give your probation processes a glow-up, zhuzh up your parental policies, and call an HR person if you need help ([email protected] ).

Finally, don’t let the bastards get you down. They don’t know what they’re wanging on about half the time.

Goodbyeeeee!