The Employment Rights Act 2025: what to measure, and when.

Already in force

The Act received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025. These changes have taken effect since:

Next: 30 October 2026 and January 2027

Later in 2027, and under review

One caveat, said once: great{with}talent is a workforce intelligence business, not a law firm. Treat this as a map. Take the dates and obligations that matter to you from your own advisers, or from the CIPD’s Employment Rights Act tracker, which is kept current.

The thread that runs through it

“All reasonable steps” is a standard of evidence. An equality action plan is judged on demonstrable action: the government guidance asks employers to use data on their workforce, where they can, to choose actions that fit, and legal commentators suggest involving employee networks and unions in choosing them. Six-month unfair dismissal protection means probation decisions will be examined on what was recorded in someone’s first few months. Simpler union recognition rewards organisations whose people already feel heard.

What employers expect

The CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook survey of more than 2,000 employers (winter 2025/26) shows where they expect the pressure to fall: three-quarters expect the Act to increase employment costs, 37% plan to hire fewer permanent staff because of at least one reform, and over half anticipate more workplace conflict. Those are the pressures good people data helps you plan for.

Where measurement helps

• Harassment, from 30 October. The defence is built from what you can show: that you assessed where the risk sat, that staff had a route to raise concerns they trusted, and that you checked whether any of it was working. An independent speak-up channel and a harassment-prevention audit answer the question a tribunal will ask – would people have used the internal route? Leaver and engagement data record bullying and harassment that never reached a grievance.
• Probation, from 1 January. Many employers are likely to shorten probation so that decisions are made and documented well inside the six-month window. Organisations with high early turnover are the most exposed. Checking in with new hires at set points in their first months – and reading leaver data for where early leavers come from – gives a manager the signal inside probation rather than at the end of it.
• Voice, from April and October. The best protection against a difficult recognition campaign is a workforce that feels heard. That needs a current, ranked picture of what matters most to your people and how they experience it, not a list of scores – and a record that shows a consultative body listened and the organisation acted.
• Equality action plans, from spring 2027. A credible plan rests on experience data by gender, age, ethnicity and disability, with small groups suppressed. If women in a particular age band are leaving at a higher rate than their colleagues, the plan should say so and say what you will do about it.
• Longer time limits, from 1 October. Claims arrive later and memories are older. An independent exit questionnaire completed at the point of leaving is a dated, contemporaneous account of how someone described their departure, in their own words. It is worth knowing that you hold it. It cuts both ways, which is the best argument we know for acting on what it says.

Three things worth doing this autumn