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Final bill format for Human Resources

welcome everybody and today's Spotlight is very specific because we are delighted to have our lovely GMA Forest P from Anderson St and you are here today Gemma to educate us all on the employment Rights bill which has been creating a lot of noise in the HR community and actually The Wider community as well any business leader needs to be aware of these H changes that are going to be coming into play so firstly thank you for coming back um my first question and I'm just going to kick off straight away with the obvious question which really is there are so many changes coming our way and it would be impossible for you to go through every single one so you have kindly said that you're going to cover the kind of the key headlines that people need to be aware of so what are the big changes that you envisage with the employment Rights bill that you know HR leaders Business Leaders need to be aware of yes so thank you first of all for having me back Katy it's lovely to be here um so yes as you said a huge Suite of changes are coming in with the employment Rights bill I won't be able to cover them all there's there's far too many um but we'll try to do what we can in the the time we've got um to cover some of the main changes so there are significant changes coming to unfair dismissal rights there's going to be changes to third party harassment family related rights um significant changes to zero hours and low hour workers and also some aspects around Trade union engagement so I'll try and touch on those on the session today so first of all unfair dismissal rights unfair dismissal is one of the biggest changes that we're going to see with the employment Rights bill currently we have a 2-year qualifying period meaning that an employee must have two years of continuous service before they can raise an uner dismissal claim unless they're going to rely on an automatic ground for for dismissal so the change that the bill is bringing in is that they will have a day one right as long as they've actually started work so the bill envisages what they call this initial period of employment which the government is also calling a probationary period so we're seeing that being used interchangeably what what they mean in the initial period of employment is that there will be a light touch approach to missiles so I put that in kind of inverted commas as the government is saying there'll be a light touch approach but we don't yet really know what that light touch approach is going to look like um there is a next steps document that sits behind the employment Rights bill which sets out that they expect the light touch approach to be set out in further regulations and they expect that to be for example holding a meeting with the employee to explain the concerns where the employees can be represented if they want to be but there seems to be no no reference to a right of appeal at this point in time so during that initial period of employment which we think will be nine months that's the government's preference but that's something to still be decided the dismissal where the principal reason is conduct capability statutary restriction or some other substantial reason the light touch approach can apply so one of these reasons relating to the employee means that the employer can use the light touch approach the right as we see it only extends to employees it doesn't extend to workers but we know the government does still want to consult on a single status of worker so that might be something that changes at some point in the future what is quite standout is that redundancy isn't on that list so we think that if you're being dismissed on grounds of redundancy regardless of how long your length of services there would still be that um Fair process to follow under the current r legislation and the employment Rights Act okay so and we think that's because redundancy is not an employee related reason it's a business related reason so we think that's perhaps why there's that different um approach so the right as well um only applies to employees so I suppose um at one point we were thinking with there be a right for workers to CL man for dismissal but at this stage it's a right relating to employees but the the government does still intend to consult on a single status of worker so that's something that we might see in um so th that's the key change for unfair dismissal um as I mentioned third party harassment is is going to change as well so prior to October 2013 there was a potential liability for employers for third party harassment um we don't currently have an explicit protection for harassment by Third parties except we did have a change on the 26th of October 2024 which brought with it the new positive Duty for employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the course of employment so that's wide enough in its definition that it could extend to third parties um but that positive Duty only relates to sexual harassment it doesn't extend to other protected characteristics so the intention would be to change that so that the employer is not allowed to permit a third party to harass an employee of theirs and if they if it happens in the course of employment and they fail to take all reasonable steps to prevent that harassment then there's a potential direct liability for an employer so a fairly significant change particularly for those that have employees you know facing the public day-to-day what what they do absolutely yeah so we'll see that come in um with the bill and also they're intending to change the positive Duty that I there so as I said the positive duty is to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and they're intending to change that as a positive duty to take all reasonable steps so a slightly higher threshold and there's some debate about what the difference is but essentially a higher threshold there for employers to fulfill okay okay I mean there's lot there's lots here JMA good grief look for employers to to be mindful of what other areas um do we need to be aware of so I touched on start flexible working so since April this year there's been a day one right to make a flexible working request um and there's always been eight statutary grounds to refuse a request so the employer has to rely on one or more of those eight statutary grounds for the test to be satisfied there isn't a question of reasonableness in that as long as they rely on one of those grounds then the test is satisfied so what the bill intends to do is make two changes so first of all they would say that it has to be reasonable for the employer to refuse the request for the change so essentially meaning the employee can argue well that was unreasonable to rely on that reason and secondly there has to be an explanation for the reason so more than just saying it's the statory ground and quoting what that is they need to set out a justification um and so there is a bit more of an onus in an organization to set out why it is that they can't make that change but crucially the changes those eight grounds you know those haven't changed so those those eight reasons are the same okay well that's some good news I guess yeah some some consistency in what's happening um and what's what's been in place so far so for family related leave there's going to be um day one rights for paternity leave and unpaid parental leave as well um currently there's a service requirement for each of those and the current protection for Parental belie bement leave is going to be extended so not just a parents who lose a child under the age of 18 there's going to be a wider entitlement to unpaid bement leave to a wider group of people although we're yet to find out who that wider group of people is yeah that'll be really um not contentious is it the right word there is a lot of conversations about brief bement leaves what classifies as you know believ when should people be allowed to believe except so I will watch that with interest and it's interesting the government aren't being kind of clearly defined and what that actually that bracket is or what those kind of categories are yeah and and businesses will have their own policies on compassionately even who that extends to and I think it is quite difficult to draw a line as to who it would extend to because it's not necessarily family members that will be the closest people to you know somebody you'd want to take time off for so watch this space and see what happens in terms of how that group is defined definitely there's also going to be some protection extended to protectant um and new mothers Beyond coming back from from work so we'll see some changes in that in that field and then some significant changes to zero hours and low hour workers so they will have the right to a guaranteed hours contract if they're a zero hours or a low hours contract so on a particular number of hours a week we don't yet know what the cut off threshold would be to be kind considered to be a low hours contractor um but essentially if you're a zero hours contract or a low hours contract then the organization is obliged to offer you a guaranteed hours contract that reflects the number of hours worked in the previous reference period and then guarantees that minimum number going forward so essentially then guaranteeing pay as a result um we expect the reference period is is 12 weeks the next steps document talks about that so looking back at the previous 12 weeks to see what the average hours have been in the number of hours worked in that period and then looking forward as to how how we would then offer the guaranteed hours in the future sure it's then for the employee or the worker should I say to accept or reject the offer they they don't need to um and it could be reviewed again if obviously they accept the revised contract and then they continue to work more hours than are set out in this minimum um hours um contract so may see that that changing there's also some changes to the right to reasonable notice of being required to work a shift for zero hours and minimum hours contract and the right to reasonable notice of a shift cancellation and the right to be paid so again we don't know what the notice paid for each of those looks like but we expect there to be some clad on that course yeah