Significant changes to employment legislation in 2024
Monday 23rd December 2024
2024 saw many legislative changes, particularly those concerning family-friendly leave. Here we have a roundup of those we think you should already be aware and which you should be considering implementing in your business.
The Carer’s Leave Act 2023 introduced the right for employees to take one week of unpaid carer’s leave to give, or arrange care, for a dependent who requires long term care. This is a day one right.
The Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024 introduced a more flexible way for fathers and partners to take paternity leave and the notification requirements to do so were reduced. Fathers and partners can now take their paternity leave as two separate blocks of one week or one block of two weeks. They can take paternity leave within the first 52 weeks of the child’s birth, a significant increase to the previous cut-off of within the first 8 weeks.
The Flexible Working (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/1328) removed the need for an employee to have at least 26 weeks service to make a flexible working request and makes it a day one right. There were also changes to how these flexible working requests operate. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 introduced the requirement for employers to consult with the employee and provide a response within two months (this was previously three months). Employees can now make two requests in any 12 month period (this used to be one request) and the employee no longer needs to explain what effect the change would have on the employer and how to alleviate that.
The Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 came into force providing pregnant employees and some new parents protection in a redundancy situation.
The ‘redundancy protected period’ is the length of time an employee has redundancy protection and from 6 April 2024, this period was extended for those taking maternity leave. The redundancy protected period during pregnancy and maternity starts when an employee tells their employer that they are pregnant and ends 18 months from the exact date the baby is born. Before this change was implemented, employees were only protected whilst on maternity leave. The redundancy protection period for those taking adoption leave was also extended as well as that for shared parental leave.
The Sexual Harassment Prevention: Worker Protection Act 2023 imposed a positive duty on employers to be proactive and take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment of its employees. The legislation has also provided employment tribunals with the power to uplift sexual harassment compensation by up to 25% where an employer is found to have breached this preventative duty. As the legislation change is recent, we are yet to see a case where this uplift has been applied and is something to watch closely for.
To assist with the new duty, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has produced an eight-step guide as to how employers can prevent and deal with sexual harassment in the workplace and how this can be approached.
