Employment Rights Act 2025: What it Changes For Health and Safety in 2026–2027

Eryn Hanby

January 29, 2026

Last year we covered the proposed Employment Rights Bill. With Royal Assent granted on 18 December 2025, it is now the Employment Rights Act 2025.

For health and safety leaders, the value of this Act is in the changes to day-to-day working conditions, the predictability of work, how absence is handled, how change is imposed, and how confidently people can speak up. Those conditions influence fatigue, rushing, reporting, conflict, turnover, and error rates.

HSE data shows 22.1 million working days were lost to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2024/25. Separate evidence regularly puts the cost of workplace conflict at around £30bn a year to employers.

Why this Act matters operationally

A consistent pattern in incidents and ill-health is that risk rises when work is unstable: last-minute changes, understaffing, fear of pay loss, and inconsistent management responses. The Act nudges employers toward more predictable scheduling, earlier protection from unfair treatment, stronger expectations around harassment prevention, and fewer incentives for presenteeism.

Who is likely to feel the change most

Government analysis links the reforms to wellbeing impacts, stating that around 2 million employees report feeling anxious about hours worked or shifts changing unexpectedly.

Some of the biggest operational impacts will land in sectors where shift volatility and customer-facing pressure are normal like care, hospitality, retail, education, logistics, and parts of manufacturing.

Predictability of work: fewer fatigue and rushing risks

The Act includes new rights around guaranteed hours for zero-hours workers and related protections. Many of these measures are scheduled for 2027, with implementation detail subject to secondary legislation.

From a safety perspective, the aim is straightforward: reduce the conditions that create fatigue, lone working gaps, rushed task execution, and supervision that exists on paper but not in reality.

What to watch in practice:

How “reference periods” and “qualifying patterns” are defined for guaranteed-hours requests
How cancellation or short-noti+ce change payments are triggered
How agency worker rights align with site labour models

Statutory Sick Pay from day one: reducing presenteeism risk

From April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) is paid from day one, and the lower earnings limit is removed. Government factsheets estimate up to 1.3 million lower-paid employees become newly entitled.

How this is related to safety:

Fewer people feeling forced to work while ill
Lower cross-infection risk in close-contact workplaces
Better recovery outcomes, fewer prolonged absences
Less error-prone work during illness (judgement, reaction time, attention)

Unfair dismissal protection after six months for earlier management discipline

Protection from unfair dismissal moves from two years to six months, scheduled for 1 January 2027. Government analysis cited by legal commentators indicates this brings around 6.3 million employees into scope.

How this is related to safety:

The first six months is where safe habits, competence, and behavioural expectations are set
Managers are pushed toward earlier, more consistent documentation and process
Workers have more reason to challenge unsafe direction and report issues.

Fire-and-rehire

The Act tightens rules to limit “dismiss and rehire” practices. Acas guidance summarises this as becoming automatically unfair in most cases, with the change scheduled for October 2026.

What this will mean for safety:

Fewer rushed, imposed changes to hours, shift patterns, workload, or role scope without proper assessment
Better alignment between HR change processes and H&S management of change expectations

Harassment and third-party harassment: treating psychosocial harm as a hazard

From October 2026, employers will be liable for third-party harassment (for example, by customers) unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it, and the duty to prevent sexual harassment also shifts to all reasonable steps.

For safety teams, this reads like any other hazard control problem:

Define the risk scenarios (where, when, who, what triggers)
Put controls in place (staffing, security, design, escalation, banning, reporting routes)
Record, investigate, learn, and track repeat locations/individuals

Bereavement leave including pregnancy loss

There is a new right to statutory bereavement leave planned to come into force in 2027, and it is not yet confirmed whether it will be paid or unpaid. Options analysis includes illustrative estimates of up to 2.7 million eligible workers.

Unmanaged grief increases distraction, sleep disruption, error likelihood, and conflict. Clear policy reduces improvisation and inconsistency at the point it matters.