Below is a summary of some key changes in employment law coming up in 2024. If they are relevant to you start planning now to avoid being caught out.
Most of the changes below will be relevant to all businesses but the right to request predictable working is only relevant where you use agency and/or zero hours workers.
Proactive prevention of sexual harassment
The new law came into force in October 2023, but you might have missed it. It requires proactive steps to be taken to prevent harassment. So, the old defence of taking ‘all reasonable steps’ may not work if you haven’t been proactive. And if you haven’t, compensation awards can be increased by up to 25%.
As always, ensuring you have good regular training for managers and staff and robust policies and procedures in place for handling issues will always be a good idea. See our blog on how to avoid sexual harassment claims and check out our training modules.
Increases in statutory sick and parental leave pay, and the national minimum and living wage
Statutory sick pay goes up to £116.75 (from £109.40) a week from 8 April 2024, as does the weekly minimum rates of statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and other types of parental leave payments to £184.03 (from £172.48).
The rates for the national living wage (NLW) and national minimum wage (NMW) will increase by the largest amount ever. The NLW will rise by nearly 10% to £11.44 per hour (from £10.42) for workers aged 21 and over. (At the moment, this only applies to workers aged 23+). Different rates for NLW and MNW continue to apply to younger workers.
You need to make sure you implement these rises and have appropriate systems in place to increase pay (and any pension payments) when low paid workers have a birthday and move from one age band to the next.
Although not all will have staff on the NLW or NMW, your people may request pay rises to maintain the differential between their current pay and workers on the minimum wage.
Flexible working
From 6 April 2024, employees will have a day-one right to make a flexible working request (currently they can only make an application after 26 weeks employment). It is also expected that staff will get the following rights:
- an ability to make 2 flexible working requests in any 12-month period (up from 1)
- a response to requests within 2 months (down from 3)
- consultation before rejecting a request.
Importantly, staff will no longer have to set out how the effects their flexible working might be dealt with by the business.
The grounds on which an employer can reject a request are not changing.
The ACAS Code of Practice on handling requests for flexible working will be updated to reflect these legal changes.
These changes could potentially see an increase in workload for your People teams as they deal with more requests.
Holidays
If you have staff that work irregular hours and/or part-year workers, a new option for ‘rolled-up’ holiday pay and a new annual leave accrual method (12.07% of hours worked) will be introduced for holiday years starting after 1 April 2024.
In addition, all workers will be able to carry over unused annual leave (within a certain period of time) where they have been absent on family leave or sick leave.
Helpfully, the new legislation also clarifies that employers do not have to keep a record of staff working hours each day, they must still keep adequate records, but these may be in whatever form the employer reasonably wishes.
TUPE for smaller organisations
For TUPE transfers after 1 July 2024, businesses will be allowed to consult directly with employees (rather than needing to elect representatives) in situations where the business has fewer than 50 employees or the proposed transfer involves fewer than 10 employees.
Carers’ leave
Employees who are carers for a dependant with a long-term care need will be able to take one week (five days) of unpaid leave a year. This will be a day one right. While this not a paid entitlement, employers can always choose to do so. No implementation date has yet been announced but this is expected on/after April 2024.
Right to predictable working patterns
If you have staff on atypical contracts, e.g. zero hours contracts, agency workers, etc, they will be able to request more predictable working hours. The date for this change isn’t certain, but it is expected in September 2024.
To be eligible staff will need to have worked for you for at least 26 weeks (although this does not have to be continuous). ACAS is currently consulting on a new code of practice to assist employers in dealing with such requests.
For those that use gig and agency workers, this is a significant change, you should start planning for it as soon as possible, for example by reviewing the terms of business with any agencies you use.
How can we help?
If you need more information about any of the changes outlined above or want to discuss implementation in your organisation such as updating staff handbooks and employment contracts etc. please get in touch: info@legaledge.co.uk
