Change is coming, significant, unavoidable change to how businesses manage their people as April and its employment law changes creep ever closer.
Right now, businesses are focused on updating policies and procedures so that everything’s legally compliant. That’s important work, but it does miss something equally important: having the right policies isn’t enough if your people don’t understand how to actually implement them.
The challenge is making sure that everyone in your business understands these new laws and how they work. The employment law changes, the ones taking place in April and the ones coming in later, are a change management challenge that requires people to do things differently across your entire organisation.
Managing change in the workplace has never been more important, especially when those changes carry significant legal and financial risk.
What Is Change Management?
At its core, change management is about helping people adopt new ways of working.
The Association for Project Management puts it well: change management is “the process, tools and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve the required business outcome”. That last part is key: achieving the actual outcome.
In practice, it’s about helping people adopt and sustain changes to the business, actively supporting them through the transition rather than simply announcing changes and hoping that people will just figure it out.
Change management has three core elements:
- People—understanding how change affects individuals and teams, recognising that people respond differently to change and giving them the support they need.
- Process—the structured approach to implementing change, with clear stages, responsibilities, and checkpoints.
- Communication—keeping everyone informed, engaged, and supported throughout the transition.
In the context of employment law changes, change management means ensuring everyone who needs to do something differently because of the new laws is able to do so.
Why Change Management Is Even More Important Now
When employment law updates come in, your managers are the ones implementing those changes. They’re handling probationary periods, responding to flexible working requests, addressing performance concerns, managing absence, and consulting on changes.
However, if they don’t fully understand what they must do differently, they might take actions, completely unintentionally, that violate the new laws.
For example, a manager who doesn’t understand the new unfair dismissal timeline might handle a probationary period exactly as they always have, letting minor issues slide in month three or four because “there’s plenty of time to see if they improve”.
Under the new rules, that’s creating significant legal exposure because the window for addressing performance issues before protection kicks in has shrunk dramatically.
Unfortunately, policies sitting in a handbook don’t always change behaviour. People change behaviour when they understand specifically what to do differently, they’ve practiced new approaches and received feedback and when they receive ongoing support during the transition period.
There’s also a competitive advantage here. Businesses that manage these changes well will come out ahead. They’ll have better chances of retaining managers who feel confident and supported rather than anxious and exposed, worried they might inadvertently create legal problems.
How you manage these changes sends powerful signals about your workplace culture. Handled well, with clear communication and support, you’ll demonstrate how you value your people and take your responsibilities as an employer seriously.
The result of improper change management:
An employee who started two weeks ago requests parental leave. The manager’s immediate thought is, “They’ve barely finished induction; can they really take leave already?”
They check the policy documents but can’t find clear guidance on handling requests from very new starters. Feeling uncertain, they respond vaguely: “Let me look into this and get back to you.”
A week passes. The employee asks again, now feeling anxious that their request is being stalled. The manager, under pressure and still unclear on the rules, approves the leave without properly planning for the absence.
The team struggles to cover the work. The manager feels stressed, and the employee feels like they’ve caused a problem by exercising their rights. Trust erodes on both sides.
The result of proper change management:
It’s late March. HR runs focused briefing sessions covering the April changes, including day-one parental leave rights.
They work through a realistic scenario: “A new team member who started three weeks ago requests parental leave. What do you do?”
Managers discuss their concerns openly: “How do we plan for this?” “Can we discuss timing?” “What about team workload?”
HR clarifies: “From April, parental leave is a day-one right. You can’t refuse it, but you can discuss timing within the legal notice periods. Here’s how to handle it…”
When a real request comes through in May, the manager handles it confidently: “Congratulations, and yes, this is a day-one right. Let’s discuss timing so we can plan properly.”
Cover gets arranged. The employee takes their leave, and nobody feels stressed or distrustful.
The Role of HR in Change Management
HR’s role during these employment law changes goes far beyond updating the employee handbook. HR is responsible for managing the entire process, ensuring that legal requirements become embedded in daily practice.
Understanding the changes deeply: You need to know more than just what’s changing legally. You need to understand what it means in practice for different roles and situations. What does a receptionist need to do differently? A middle manager? A senior executive? Anticipate their questions before they ask.
Planning the change process: Think strategically about how you’ll deliver information and make sure everyone’s compliant. Who needs to change what behaviours?
Communicating effectively: This means adapting messages for different people. That might look something like this:
To senior leaders: “The six-month unfair dismissal protection increases tribunal risk and requires stronger early performance management. We need to invest in manager training and update our probation processes. Budget required: £X. Timeline: 3 months.”
To managers: “From January 2027, employees get unfair dismissal protection at six months instead of two years. This applies to employees we have already hired, too. That means you need to address performance concerns earlier, ideally within the first three months of employment. Here’s what that looks like in practice…”
To employees: “From January 2027, you’ll have stronger protection against unfair dismissal after six months of employment instead of two years. Here’s what this means for you…”
Building capability: This means identifying where skills gaps will prevent successful implementation.
If managers don’t know how to have early performance conversations, all the policy updates in the world won’t help.
Ideally, HR should invest in designing or sourcing training that allows managers to build their skills through realistic scenarios and practice. It may also help to create resources like decision trees and templates that managers can reference when they need them.
Supporting people through transition recognises the human element. Change creates uncertainty and sometimes resistance, even when the change is necessary and ultimately positive. Some businesses find they need external support during major transitions like this, someone with dedicated time and expertise to manage these changes while the internal team keeps things running. That’s where interim or retained HR support can help.
Managing Change in the Workplace: 5 Practical Steps
Knowing change management matters is one thing. Here’s how to actually do it:
Step 1: Start with why. Explain why these changes are happening. Help people understand the broader context, that the updates outlined in the Employment Rights Act aim to strengthen employee protections. Where possible, connect changes to your business values and objectives: make it meaningful.
Step 2: Map who needs to do what differently. Be specific about which roles are affected by which changes. You might want to create a simple matrix that looks something like this to help:
Role | What Changes | By When | Support Needed
Don’t assume people will figure it out; spell it out clearly and unambiguously.
Step 3: Communicate early and often. People need time to process information and prepare. Use multiple channels: team meetings for discussion, emails for reference, training sessions for practice, and written guidance for ongoing access. Make information accessible and easy to find when people need it.
Step 4: Support your managers. Your managers will be your primary agents of change. They’re the ones who’ll be implementing these changes daily with their teams. So, you should ensure that they understand changes thoroughly before they need to explain them to others.
Be available for questions and guidance as they navigate new approaches.
Step 5: Monitor and adjust. Check in regularly on how implementation is progressing across different teams and areas. Be willing to adjust your approach based on what you learn. Rigidity in the face of clear evidence that something isn’t working helps nobody.
What effective monitoring looks like:
It’s June 2026, two months after the changes took effect. HR schedules 30-minute check-ins with six managers across different departments.
The conversation is structured around three questions:
- What’s working well?
- What’s creating problems or confusion?
- What support do you need that you’re not getting?
Patterns emerge:
Three managers mention struggling with the new probation timeline. They’re documenting conversations but finding it difficult to give direct feedback early without it feeling harsh or premature. They’re worried about damaging relationships with new starters.
Two managers in customer-facing roles report a spike in day-one parental leave requests. They’re handling them fine, but the short notice periods are creating operational challenges they hadn’t anticipated.
One manager says everything’s going smoothly, but when HR probes, it turns out they haven’t had any situations that required the new approaches yet, so they’re not sure if they’re actually ready.
HR takes action based on what they’ve learnt:
- HR runs a follow-up session specifically on early feedback conversations, practicing how to be direct while remaining supportive.
- They work with customer-facing managers to develop better contingency planning for short-notice absences.
- Schedules practice scenarios for the manager who hasn’t needed to use the new approaches yet.
They also identify what’s working:
Managers appreciate the one-page decision trees and reference them frequently. The direct line to HR for questions is being used appropriately, and managers feel supported.
HR expands the decision tree format to cover more scenarios based on what managers are asking about most.Three months later, they check in again. The early feedback issue has resolved as managers feel more confident. The operational challenges with parental leave have improved with better planning, too. New issues have emerged, but HR addresses those and creates plans for further improvement.
Preparing Your Business
There’s a genuine opportunity here for businesses that get this right.
Treat these employment law changes as a change management challenge by investing in communication and building your team’s skills, and you’ll develop stronger management skills that serve you well beyond these specific changes.
You’ll build more trust with your people by demonstrating that you’re willing to support them through difficult transitions, and in the long term, you’ll emerge better equipped to handle whatever changes come next because you’ve built effective change management systems together with your people.
Need support managing Employment Law changes? We can help you develop and implement a change management plan that works for your business and your people.