Employment Rights Act - One Year to Impact!
The Employment Rights Act 2025: Getting Ready for the Manager's Challenge Ahead
Managers have just under a year to get ready for the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes that bite from 1 January 2027, and the spotlight is firmly on how you manage people from day one. For hard‑pressed line managers, this is less about memorising legislation and more about tightening up everyday performance management, communication and feedback.
What actually changes in 2027?
The Act doesn't arrive in one big bang; measures are being phased in across 2026 and 2027, but one of the most significant shifts for managers is coming on 1 January 2027. From that date, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal will drop from two years' service to six months, meaning many employees will gain protection much earlier in their employment journey. In practice, someone hired around summer 2026 could already have unfair dismissal protection on 1 January 2027.
Alongside this, the Act introduces tighter rules around "fire and rehire", stronger expectations on reasonable handling of flexible working requests, and new rights around job security and predictability of hours. Several of these changes are designed to clamp down on one‑sided flexibility and to raise the bar on how employers treat people from day one.
Why this lands on managers' desks
These reforms look technical on paper, but they translate into very human moments that sit squarely with line managers: setting expectations, giving feedback, and having tough conversations early and fairly. With shorter routes to unfair dismissal protection and closer scrutiny of shift patterns, flexible working and contractual changes, "let's see how it goes" is about to become a risky strategy.
Hard‑pressed managers are already juggling hybrid teams, high workloads and constant change, and many have never had proper training in handling performance or conduct issues. Under the new regime, vague notes, half‑remembered chats and "we'll pick this up in probation" simply won't be enough to reassure HR, senior leaders or - if it comes to it - an employment tribunal.
Day one performance management (for real this time)
If employees are going to gain meaningful protection much earlier, organisations need performance management that starts on day one and is sustained, not postponed until a problem explodes. That means:
Clear role definitions and success measures before someone even starts, not a job description dug out mid‑probation.
A structured onboarding plan for the first 90 - 180 days, with regular, documented check‑ins rather than a single probation meeting at the end.
Honest, specific feedback from week one, including when things are not on track, instead of hints and hopeful signals.
Early support: training, buddying, shadowing and coaching conversations, so that concerns are matched with genuine opportunities to improve.
Done well, this isn't about creating a defensive paper trail; it's about building a culture where expectations are transparent and people know where they stand. Ironically, the behaviours that best protect an organisation legally are exactly the behaviours that help people thrive.
Communication, feedback and psychological safety
The Act also reinforces expectations around how reasonably employers respond to flexible working and other statutory rights, which again lands managers in the front line. It will be more important than ever that managers can explain decisions clearly, link them to business reasons, and show they have genuinely listened and considered alternatives.
That calls for a different quality of everyday conversation:
Regular one‑to‑ones where employees can raise concerns early, rather than saving everything for an annual appraisal.
A feedback style that is candid without being clumsy - naming the issue, describing the impact, and co‑creating a way forward.
Confidence to document key conversations in a way that is factual and fair, not inflammatory or defensive.
This is precisely where many managers feel most exposed: they know the conversation needs to happen, but worry about "saying the wrong thing" or triggering a complaint. Under the new legal landscape, avoiding the conversation is likely to carry more risk than having it well and early.
Coaching, training and support are not a luxury
None of this means every manager now needs to be an amateur employment lawyer, but it does mean they need to be better supported. HR and senior leaders will need to invest in three things in particular:
Practical training in handling probation, capability and conduct, grounded in real scenarios, not just policy slides.
Access to timely advice and templates so managers can document fairly and consistently without turning every issue into a legal drama.
Coaching and reflective spaces where managers can think through tricky cases, test different approaches and build their own confidence.
Coaching and leadership development are not silver bullets, and they won't remove legal risk. But they do help managers develop the judgement, self‑awareness and relationship skills that sit underneath good performance management, which is exactly where the Employment Rights Act 2025 will quietly test organisations from January 2027 onwards.
If you want to find out more about the legislation and its implications, we recommend exploring these authoritative sources: the UK Government's Employment Rights Act 2025 factsheets, the Employment Rights Act 2025 overview from the Department for Work and Pensions, and Acas's comprehensive guide to the Act, which provides practical guidance for employers and managers.