Employment Rights Act Watch: June 2026 edition

• 1 June 2026
• News
• Employment

Welcome to your monthly update on the Employment Rights Act 2025, tracking key developments, implementation milestones and practical steps for employers.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is the biggest overhaul of employment rights in decades. Changes span the breadth of the employment law world, and the sheer volume can be overwhelming. For an overview of all the changes, please refer to our recently updated factsheet here.

Where are we on implementation?

No new milestones since the last edition of Employment Rights Act Watch –

The last implementation dates in April 2026 passed, and we are continuing to support clients to prepare for implementation milestones on 1 October 2026 and 1 January 2027.

Effective on 1 October 2026, we expect to see changes in a number of areas, including:

• The legal framework relating to harassment, with the enhancement of the duty to take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of employees (in future, the duty to take “all reasonable steps”) and the reintroduction of employer liability for the harassment of employees by third-parties (including suppliers, customers and clients).
• Rules governing written policies around tips and gratuities, where we will see the introduction of new duties to consult on tips policies and a requirement to refresh these every three years.
• Trade union laws, including new rights for trade unions to access workplaces (see more detail here) and a new employer duty to provide staff with information on their right to join a trade union.
• Tribunal time limits, which we expect to be extended from three months to six months.

The 1 January 2027 implementation date will then (among other things) see implementation of the much-publicised changes to the unfair dismissal regime.

What should you be focusing on?

Unfair dismissal

For now, your primary focus should continue to be on preparing for the changes to the unfair dismissal regime, which will see qualifying periods reduce from two years to six months and compensation caps removed. While the changes will not take effect until 1 January 2027, that is a red herring – the key date to work towards is 2 July 2026. That is because hires starting work on that date will have six months’ service on 1 January 2027 and are therefore the first to benefit fully from the new regime – and the first hires for whom you will need to make suitability decisions before the six-month mark. You should be reviewing and updating your hiring and probation procedures to reflect the new regime, with the aim of having updated processes operational by the beginning of July. This is therefore the last month you have to design and implement new procedures ready for your first hires operating under the new regime.

Please do reach out to us if you would like to discuss your arrangements in more detail.

October 2026 changes: thinking about harassment prevention

As you are finalising your preparations for the changes to the unfair dismissal regime, you should now also start looking ahead to the next implementation date on 1 October 2026. We are still awaiting some updated government guidance and further legislative detail on some of the changes (including the new duty to inform staff of their right to join a trade union and new rules on tipping policies), so some of your preparations will need to wait. However, you can and should be starting to think about your prevention frameworks for sexual harassment and third-party harassment.

We will be issuing you with more detailed guidance on these changes in the coming edition of Employment Rights Act Watch. For now, we recommend that you:

• Consider your existing risk assessment and framework of measures to prevent sexual harassment. Critically evaluate what has worked and what has not, consider how any issues that have arisen have been handled and lessons learned, and start brainstorming what further measures you can sensibly put in place.
• Carry out a risk assessment to assess the risks of employees suffering harassment by third-parties in the course of their employment. Look at the touchpoints where employees regularly interact with third-parties (including clients, customers and suppliers) and any specific risks. Start thinking about how those risks can be addressed.

What is the very latest on the Employment Rights Act?

The only burning development over the last month is on Tribunal time limits. The government had previously indicated that changes to time limits for employment claims (to extend time limits from three to six months) would be taking effect “no earlier than October 2026”. Wider legislative activity now suggests that we can indeed expect these changes to be coming into force on the 1 October 2026 implementation date. Read our update here.

Beyond that, one further consultation (on reforms affecting zero and low-hours contract workers) has been published, and two consultations have now closed – the consultation on modernising the agency worker framework (including in connection with the regulation of umbrella companies) and the consultation on an alternative cross-establishment trigger for collective redundancies. We do not have a government response on either of these yet, but we will keep you updated.