Employment Rights Act 2025 Training
Practical Employment Rights Act 2025 training helping employers, HR and managers understand reforms already in force, upcoming changes and actions required.
Practical Employment Rights Act 2025 training helping employers, HR and managers understand reforms already in force, upcoming changes and actions required.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 represents a substantial period of change for employers. Implementation is taking place in phases across 2026 and 2027, making it essential that leaders, HR professionals and managers understand not only what is changing, but when different provisions take effect.
Employment-law reform is not simply an HR policy exercise. Changes can affect recruitment, probation, dismissal, absence, family rights, harassment prevention, consultation, trade-union relations and everyday management decisions.
This practical programme helps organisations understand the changing framework and prepare managers to apply fair, consistent and equality-aware processes.
In‑house courses are private sessions delivered exclusively for a group of people from your organisation, on a date that suits you, with the option to tailor the content to your staff and setting.
Open courses are public Equality and Diversity UK training dates that anyone can book onto, ideal when you only need training for one or two people.
Not every provision of the Employment Rights Act 2025 took effect when the Act became law. Measures are being introduced in stages.
This distinction is important. Delegates need to understand which obligations already apply, which changes are approaching and which remain subject to future implementation arrangements.
The programme can cover relevant measures already implemented during 2026, including changes affecting Statutory Sick Pay, day-one Paternity Leave and Unpaid Parental Leave, collective redundancy protective awards, whistleblowing protection relating to sexual harassment and the establishment of the Fair Work Agency.
Electronic and workplace balloting for statutory trade-union ballots also took effect in August 2026.
Further reforms are scheduled across late 2026 and 2027. Organisations therefore need to avoid waiting until every provision has commenced before reviewing their processes.
Preparation can include reviewing policies, manager capability, documentation, probation arrangements, harassment risk management, consultation processes and how employment decisions are monitored for fairness.
This programme is designed for HR and People professionals, senior leaders, line managers, chief executives, principals, trustees, governors, operations managers and others with responsibility for employment decisions or organisational governance.
It can be adapted for education, charities, voluntary and community organisations, local government and other public, private and third-sector employers.
Understand important reforms that employers should already be implementing.
Identify forthcoming changes and where preparation should begin now.
Translate employment-law reform into fair, practical management decisions.
One of the most significant forthcoming changes concerns ordinary unfair dismissal.
The qualifying period is scheduled to reduce from two years to six months for dismissals from 1 January 2027. Existing protections that do not require the ordinary qualifying period, including relevant automatically unfair dismissal protections, remain important.
This makes effective probation management increasingly important. Managers need clear expectations, timely feedback, appropriate support, good records and fair decision-making rather than relying on short service as a substitute for sound management practice.
The reduction in the qualifying period does not mean every employee acquires ordinary unfair-dismissal protection on their first day.
It does reinforce the value of good practice from the beginning of employment: clear expectations, consistent decisions, appropriate adjustments, evidence and managers who understand the consequences of bias or discrimination.
From October 2026, the time limit for bringing most Employment Tribunal claims increases from three months to six months.
The programme explores what increased exposure periods can mean for record keeping, evidence, investigations and the importance of resolving workplace concerns effectively.
Employers already have preventative responsibilities relating to sexual harassment, with further strengthening scheduled. The programme considers the move towards taking all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and forthcoming obligations concerning third-party harassment.
Delegates explore practical risk assessment, reporting mechanisms, leadership behaviour, workplace culture and the importance of acting before a complaint occurs.
Changes to Statutory Sick Pay, parental rights and other family-related provisions affect both policy and everyday management.
Delegates consider how managers can apply employment rights consistently while remaining alert to disability, discrimination, pregnancy and maternity considerations and reasonable adjustments.
Flexible-working reform continues to develop. The course helps delegates distinguish current rights from future changes and consider how requests should be handled consistently, objectively and with awareness of indirect discrimination risks.
The Act includes significant trade-union reforms. Relevant changes include statutory balloting arrangements, workplace access and requirements concerning information about the right to join a trade union.
Content can be tailored according to whether these provisions are particularly relevant to your workforce and industrial relations environment.
Organisational change requires more than a technically correct process. Selection criteria, consultation, reasonable adjustments and decision-making can all create equality and employee-relations risks.
Delegates explore how stronger documentation, consultation and equality analysis can support fairer and more defensible organisational change.
Employment rights and equality law overlap frequently in practice. Decisions about probation, dismissal, absence, flexible working, redundancy or conduct can have different effects on different employees.
The programme therefore integrates EDI into management decision-making rather than treating equality as a separate compliance topic.
By the end of the programme, delegates should be better able to:
The programme can be tailored to your sector, existing employment policies, workforce arrangements and the reforms that present the greatest practical implications for your organisation.
All our courses are tailored to ensure the training reflects your organisation's goals, employment practices and priorities.
The course can be delivered face-to-face or online via Zoom or Teams.
To support participation, discussion and interaction, we recommend the following group sizes per session:
Need to train a larger workforce? No problem. We regularly work with organisations that need to train larger numbers of employees. Where appropriate, training can be delivered across multiple sessions to ensure everyone receives the same high-quality, interactive learning experience. We can develop a delivery programme to suit your workforce size, locations and timescales.
Please note: the half-day rate is not always available for face-to-face sessions.
Listen to our Employment Rights Act 2025 podcast for further discussion of key questions for employers, HR teams and managers.
Over 25 years' experience delivering equality, diversity and inclusion training, consultancy and professional development.
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