Changes to employee rights – what to expect

If you are a small business and employ even just one person, it is vital to keep up to date with changes to employment law. This article highlights what changes have been announced and where you can obtain additional information. If you are an employee, it is worth ensuring you know your rights and if you are a sole businessperson, it is worthwhile knowing how these changes might affect your plans for growth.

With a new government in place that has clearly hit the ground running, we can expect the announced changes to the law and the way that employers are to do things to be introduced very quickly.

Labour: New Deal for Working People

During the general election campaign, the Labour Party proposed wide-ranging reforms to employment legislation, and it is expected that in their first 100 days in government, the wheels will be set in motion to introduce many of those. In a nutshell, the key changes are:

• Changes to help protect employees with less than two years’ service from unfair dismissal

• Changes to protect employees from ‘fire/rehire’ practices

• Changes to the way employment law is enforced

• Greater protection for employees from redundancy including changing the rules around TUPE

• Addressing the pay-gap and discrimination

• Strengthening of whistleblowers’ protection and strengthening employers’ legal duties to address harassment and discrimination in the workplace

• Family leave rights to be enhanced

• Greater protection from losing their job for pregnant women

• Banning zero hour contracts

• Greater regularisation of casual labour contracts

• Equalising the age bands for National Minimum Wage and reviewing the rate of NMW

• Introducing the right to ‘switch off’ from work and not be expected to work outside contracted hours

• Introducing the right to work flexibly from the outset of an employment contract

• Review of carers’ leave

It will be really interesting to see how these develop and how they work in practice but we would suggest that where employees are treated fairly and decently (like being able to take reasonable time off to look after families, or being able to switch off the mobile and disconnect from work duties during time off) the employee and employer relationship flourishes and so does business.

But we do recognise that some of these may hit the bottom line and you may have to review your business plans, for example, reworking expenditure forecasts when the NMW increases for example. So the big tip from Athena here is: if you have employees or plan to employ, do your homework, research the implications the potential changes will have for you and always keep abreast of changes.

The UK Government has a helpful website with loads of information that is updated regularly. HMRC also offers employer seminars and Q&As which are definitely worth checking out - www.gov.uk

ACAS – the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service – also provides a good deal of information and a code of practise for employers to follow - www.ACAS.org.uk