When you think about preparing for the upcoming employment law changes in 2026, what comes to mind? Updated policies? Compliance training?
Significant employment law updates are arriving throughout 2026 and into 2027, with major changes taking effect in April. Many businesses are understandably focusing on documentation and policy updates, making sure everything’s legally watertight.
But there’s a missing piece that no amount of paperwork can replace: the ability to have good conversations.
Laws create frameworks and establish rights, but it’s relationships and communication that determine how those frameworks work in practice. A perfectly drafted policy becomes useless if managers don’t know how to apply it.
When managers know how to communicate effectively and maintain trust even in challenging moments, compliance becomes considerably easier to achieve and much less of a concern because you can trust that policies are being used correctly by everyone in your team.
In this article, we’ll explore how the employment law changes affect day-to-day management, why communication skills have become business-critical, what these skills look like in practice and the steps you can take to prepare your business properly.
Here’s What’s Changing in 2026
Let’s start with a quick recap of what’s actually changing. We’ve previously covered the full scope of 2026’s employment law changes in detail, but here are the changes that most directly affect everyday management:
April 2026:
- Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave will become a day-one right.
- Statutory Sick Pay will be paid from the first day of illness instead of the fourth, and the lower earnings limit will be removed.
- The maximum protective award for failure to consult in the case of a collective redundancy will double from 90 days’ pay to 180.
- Sexual harassment will become a ‘qualifying disclosure’ under whistleblowing law.
- The Fair Work Agency will be established.
October 2026:
- Employers must take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment, and they will also become liable for harassment (all types) from third parties.
- Employers must consult workers or their representatives before creating a tipping policy, and this policy must be reviewed every 3 years.
- Workers who have taken part in industrial action will be protected from detriment.
January 2027:
- Unfair dismissal protection drops from a two-year qualifying period to just six months. Anyone hired in 2026 who reaches that six-month mark after the law changes will also be protected.
- Fire and rehire becomes automatically unfair dismissal in the vast majority of cases.
- ‘Exploitative’ zero-hour contracts will be banned, and employers must offer guaranteed hours to individuals working regular patterns.
Workplace Communication Skills Matter More Than Ever
The balance of power is shifting.
Employees are getting more rights and stronger protections. That’s not necessarily a problem: happy, secure employees tend to be more productive and loyal, after all.
However, the costs of handling these changes incorrectly just got significantly higher.
When communication breaks down, performance issues grow because managers avoid difficult conversations they don’t know how to handle.
Employees feel unheard, leading to formal grievances that might have been resolved with a conversation. Minor disagreements escalate because no one knows how to navigate conflict constructively, and trust breaks down, making every conversation after that more difficult and defensive.
With shorter unfair dismissal qualifying periods, you can’t afford to let performance issues continue on for months, hoping they’ll improve on their own. You need managers who can address concerns clearly and constructively within the first few months of employment.
Those who would have tried to rely on fire and rehire will now find that contractual changes require the ability to explain business needs and find solutions that work for everyone involved.
For businesses with recognised unions or operating in unionised sectors, communication skills become even more essential. The Employment Rights Act strengthens union powers significantly through simplified processes and extended mandates, meaning that effective consultation, negotiation, and relationship-building with union representatives will be essential to managing industrial relations.
The Skills Your Managers Need
What does good workplace communication look like in practice?
Here are the specific skills your managers need to develop, with examples of what each one might look like in practice:
The ability to handle difficult conversations.
It’s week ten of a new hire’s employment. Their work isn’t meeting expectations: they’re missing deadlines and making errors that other team members have to fix. They haven’t responded well to initial feedback.
A manager with strong communication skills raises this directly in a one-to-one. They’re specific about the gaps: “The quarterly report was due on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday with three spelling errors. The client brief last week needed substantial rewriting before we could use it.”
They explain the impact: “This is creating extra work for the team and affecting our ability to deliver on time.” They then ask what’s going wrong and listen to the response. Together, they agree on a clear improvement plan with specific expectations and a review date. Everything gets documented by the manager.
A manager without these skills hopes things will improve on their own. They drop hints in team meetings, mentioning “quality issues” vaguely without naming specific issues. By month five, the problems are worse, and there’s no documentation trail. At month six, now within unfair dismissal protection, you’ve got a serious problem and no evidence of reasonable management.
With unfair dismissal protection dropping to six months in January 2027, you can’t afford to let performance issues slide. Anyone hired from mid-2026 onwards will reach that six-month threshold under the new rules, so managers need to address concerns early.
Active listening
An employee requests a change to their working hours. On the surface, it seems straightforward enough.
A manager who listens actively doesn’t process the request mechanically. They ask why. They discover that the employee’s childcare arrangement has changed, so they’re struggling with the commute, and they’re genuinely worried about losing their job if they can’t make it to work. The manager explores options: could a slight shift in hours help? Could hybrid working make the commute more manageable?
Even if the exact request can’t be accommodated, the employee feels heard. The manager explains the business constraints clearly and documents what was discussed and why. If the decision is ultimately no, it’s no, but it’s a no that came after a real conversation and effort to find another solution.
A manager who doesn’t listen hears “change my hours,” thinks about the difficulty of changing the rota, and says no. The employee feels ignored, assumes the business doesn’t care about their circumstances, and either leaves or files a formal grievance about inflexibility.
Day-one parental leave rights (from April 2026) mean managers will be handling requests from employees they’ve only just started working with. When someone requests flexibility in their second week of employment, managers need to be able to problem-solve collaboratively and build trust quickly.
The ability to document decisions properly.
After any significant conversation, a manager should create a clear, factual record.
Good documentation captures:
- What was discussed (the facts, not opinions).
- What was decided and why.
- What happens next and when.
- Who was present.
It’s written as if a tribunal judge might read it in two years’ time. It doesn’t include subjective commentary (“Employee was being difficult”) or vague statements (“We discussed various issues”). It says: “On 15 March 2026, I met with [employee] to discuss three instances where work quality didn’t meet expectations. We discussed [specific examples]. We agreed [specific action plan]. We will review progress on 15 April 2026.”
Poor documentation is either non-existent, vague (“Had a chat with Sarah about her performance. Needs to improve”), or so opinionated it would actively harm your case in a tribunal (“Employee has a bad attitude and isn’t a team player”).
Stronger employee protections across the board mean that showing you’ve made all decisions reasonably has never been more important.
Building and maintaining trust.
A manager who builds trust:
- Follows through on what they say they’ll do. If they promise to check on a policy and come back to you by Friday, they do it.
- Is transparent about processes and timelines. When an employee raises a concern, the manager explains what will happen next.
- Treats people fairly and consistently. The rules apply the same way to everyone. If one person gets flexibility for childcare, others know they can ask for flexibility for different reasons and get a fair hearing.
- Admits when they don’t know something.
A manager who erodes trust:
- Says they’ll do something and doesn’t follow through. Promises to “look into it” and never mentions it again.
- Is secretive or vague about processes. “I’ve escalated your concern” with no information about what happens next or when you’ll hear back.
- Applies rules inconsistently. One person gets approved for remote working, another doing identical work gets refused with no clear explanation.
- Makes decisions that seem arbitrary or unfair because they haven’t explained the reasoning.
Consulting effectively.
Your business needs to make changes. The law requires consultation in many of these situations, but meaningful consultation is different from going through the motions.
Effective consultation:
A manager sits down with the team and explains, “We need to change how we structure the late shift. Here’s the business need we’re trying to solve. Here are two options we’re considering. What would work for you? What have we missed?
They actively listen to the responses. If someone points out a problem with option A that the manager hadn’t considered, that gets factored in. The final decision might not be what everyone wanted, but people can see that their input shaped the outcome and understand why the decision was made.
The process is documented: what was proposed, what feedback was received, how that feedback influenced the decision, and why the final approach was chosen.
Ineffective consultation:
A manager announces, “We’re changing the shift pattern from next month. Here’s what it will be. Any questions?” The decision was made before the conversation happened.
Employees feel like the process was a tick-box exercise. They’re resentful because they weren’t given genuine input, and problems that could have been identified early surface later as grievances or resistance.
Employers soon must consult workers before creating or changing tipping policies (October 2026), and the protective award for failing to consult on collective redundancies will double to 180 days’ pay (April 2026).
On top of this, union powers have been strengthened through simplified recognition processes and extended mandates. So, getting consultation wrong now has the potential to create legal vulnerabilities and financial risk.
Practical Steps to Prepare
Knowing what good communication looks like is one thing. Here’s how to build that into how your business operates:
Step 1: Audit your current state. Ask yourself and your people these questions:
- How confident are your managers in handling difficult conversations?
- When issues arise, do they typically get addressed early or allowed to fester until they become unavoidable?
- Do employees feel comfortable raising concerns, or do things only surface through formal grievances?
- How often do minor disagreements escalate to formal procedures that should have been unnecessary?
- Are your documentation practices consistent and adequate across different teams and managers?
Step 2: Identify your priority areas. Which managers need the most support right now? What specific skills are missing or underdeveloped across your management team? What does your workforce profile suggest you’ll need most? For instance, if you operate in a unionised environment, consultation skills matter more, whereas if you’re hiring frequently, given the new unfair dismissal rules, early performance management may be more of a focus for you.
Step 3: Invest in development. Some businesses may want to invest in external support when it comes to the development of great communication practices. Look for effective People management training that builds practical communication skills through practice and scenarios, not just theoretical frameworks. You can do this internally, too. One way is by creating peer support networks where managers can learn from each other’s experiences and ask for advice when needed.
Step 4: Update policies and processes. Ensure your HR policies reflect the new legal requirements coming into force. Create clear, practical guidance for managers on handling common situations: what to do, what to document and when to escalate. Document your expectations for communication and consultation, so managers know what good looks like.
Step 5: Monitor and adjust. Track how issues are being resolved across the organisation. Gather feedback from both managers and employees on what’s working and what isn’t, and use this to identify emerging patterns or concerns that suggest issues with your business’s systems or policies.
Businesses thrive when people of all seniority and roles can approach each other with open minds and a genuine desire to find solutions together.
Stronger employee protections mean that the ability to have good conversations is now much more important. You can’t rely on long qualifying periods to avoid addressing performance issues, and you can’t use fire and rehire to bypass negotiation. The path forward requires mutual respect and the ability to have hard conversations without damaging relationships.
The businesses that will navigate 2026’s changes most successfully aren’t necessarily those with the most sophisticated policies or the biggest legal budgets. They’re the ones where people talk to each other honestly.
Need help preparing your managers for what’s ahead?
We’re here to support you with practical HR guidance that makes sense for your business and makes sure to include your people.