Latest employment rights consultations – let us know what you think

While these measures are now fixed under the Employment Rights Act, some elements of the Government’s employment reform agenda are still under consideration.

The important consultations published earlier this month were:

Fire and Rehire: changes to expenses, benefits and shift patterns

Firstly, the consultation asks whether changes to expenses and benefits in kind should be treated as restricted variations – i.e. changes that an employer can’t impose via fire and rehire without risking automatic unfair dismissal.

There’s two options for this:

• Option One (Government’s preferred): All expenses and benefits in kind would be excluded from the definition of restricted variations. This means employers could dismiss and re-engage to change these terms without triggering automatic unfair dismissal, though tribunals would still consider fairness.
• Option Two: Exclude most expenses and benefits except certain key ones, such as share schemes, travel expenses, and accommodation that resemble core pay and form part of remuneration.

Secondly, the consultation asks whether changes to shift patterns should be treated as restricted. 

The options here are:

• Option One  (Government’s preferred): Only major shift changes e.g. moving from day to night work (or vice versa) and weekday to weekend work (or vice versa) would be restricted variations.
• Option Two: No shift pattern changes would be restricted variations.

While we’re broadly aligned with Option One in both cases, as they allow more flexibility for employers, we’re keen to hear what you think (and any examples you have, which can be anonymised, to help illustrate our policy position). Please send any thoughts to Carys Davis by 10 March to [email protected].

Improving access to flexible working

This next key consultation seeks views on how to improve access to flexible working by creating a statutory process for handling flexible working requests. Although the right to request flexible working became a day-one right in 2024, the Government’s concerned that employers’ responses to requests are inconsistent, and flexible working isn’t always fairly considered. It will remain the case that an employer must be able to reject a specific request where it is not reasonable to accept it, but the Government wants to put in place a new process that employers must follow when this is the case.

The process is laid out on Page 18, and includes suggested timelines and the need for written confirmations. So, we’d like to know – do you think it’ll be workable? Let us know by 10 March by emailing [email protected].