UK enacts Employment Rights Act expanding parental leave and sick pay
Change
UK enacted the Employment Rights Act establishing day-one rights to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave and expanding statutory sick pay from April to extend eligibility to about 4.7 million women, including roughly 830,000 newly eligible low-paid workers.
Why it matters
Employers must revise payroll and human resources policies to provide statutory sick pay to newly eligible low-paid staff and to grant day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave. Large employers must introduce menopause action plans and strengthen protections for pregnant employees, creating new compliance and documentation obligations.
Implications
- • Employer payroll teams must update payroll systems and wage-threshold calculations to include newly eligible low-paid workers in statutory sick pay processing, or payroll underpayments will create legal non-compliance.
- • Human resources teams must revise leave policies, recording systems and employee communications to grant day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave and to manage shared parental leave entitlements, or employees will retain enforceable claims.
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