This question was raised at the beginning of last year and therefore all of these legal changes are now in place and you need to ensure your policies are up to date.

• Your Legal Duty to prevent Sexual Harassment at work came into force on the 26th October as in Q1.
• Statutory carers leave has given eligible employees the right to take up to a week of unpaid leave each year to care for a dependent with long-term care needs.
• If an employee’s newborn baby has been in hospital they may be entitled to statutory neonatal care leave for up to 12 weeks.
• The way you calculate leave entitlement for staff with irregular hours has now changed so your holiday policy may need to be updated.
• The National Minimum Wage has now risen to £11.44 per hour. The age threshold has also lowered so that 21 year olds are now entitled to the higher bracket.
• Statutory sick pay has risen to £116.75 per week.
• Maternity, paternity and adoption pay have risen to £184.03 per week.
• There are also new flexible working rules which mean your employees can now make a request from day 1 of joining you, can make two requests for flexible working each year and you must consult with employees before rejecting a request.
• Employees who have an unstable or unpredictable working pattern now have the right to request a more stable working arrangement. This includes those with casual or zero-hours contracts.
• There have also been changes to redundancy rights – obviously you hope never to need to know about this but it’s important to ensure your redundancy policy is aligned with new entitlements.
• The new law around managing staff tips came into force in July of this year as noted in Q3 – the main thing to be aware of here is that you must have a policy for tips that your team and the public can easily access.