October 2026 brings a chunky set of employment law changes for UK employers. The most useful way to think about them is as a test of three things: whether your business deals with people problems early, whether you know where employees are exposed to risk, and whether your managers know what to do when something goes wrong.
One important date sits just beyond October. From 1 January 2027, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal protection drops from two years to six months. That is worth preparing for now, not after Christmas.
So, rather than another employment law dump, here is what the changes mean in practice.
Test One: Do You Deal With People Problems While They Are Still Small?
From 1 October 2026, the usual time limit for bringing many Employment Tribunal claims goes up from three months to six. Difficult grievances, dismissals and workplace disputes can stay legally live for much longer, and employees have more time to take advice and decide whether to bring a claim.
For employers, the bigger issue is what that exposes.
- You’ve investigated a grievance, is the outcome clear and properly recorded? If you’ve dismissed somebody, could the manager still explain six months later why they made that decision?
- Somebody has been dismissed, could the manager still explain six months later why the decision was made?
- Performance concerns have been discussed, is there a useful record of what was said, what support was offered and what improvement was expected?
It matters more still from 1 January 2027, when the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal drops to six months. Somebody who joined in the second half of 2026 may already have six months’ service by the time the new rules take effect, so the breathing space employers have relied on is getting much shorter.
This does not mean employers need to become harsher or rush to dismiss people before a deadline. It means probation and performance management need to work properly. Set clear expectations from the start, give feedback while there is still time for somebody to respond, and deal with concerns as they emerge rather than storing them up for a formal review months later.
The question is no longer whether somebody has “passed probation”. It is whether, if that person was not performing, the business and the employee would both already understand the problem, know what needed to improve and have a fair record of the conversations that had taken place.
Test Two: Do You Know Where Your Employees Are Exposed To Risk?
From 30 October 2026, employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, alongside new obligations on third-party harassment. That widens the issue considerably. Behaviour between colleagues is only part of it: employers will also need to think about customers, clients, contractors, patients, service users, suppliers and other people employees deal with as part of their jobs.
This is where generic policies start to lose their value. A hospitality business may need to think about late-night working and intoxicated customers, while a consultancy may have employees visiting client sites alone. A care organisation may have staff dealing with patients and their families every day. An office-based team may face little day-to-day risk but a different environment altogether at conferences, client events or work socials.
The more useful exercise is to look at how the work is done day to day and ask where inappropriate behaviour could happen, whether employees would know how to report it, whether managers would know how to respond, and whether the business would be prepared to challenge a paying client or customer if it came to that.
Those answers tell you far more about how prepared you are than the date printed at the bottom of your harassment policy.
Test Three: Do Your Managers Know Enough Not To Make Things Worse?
30 October also brings a substantial package of trade union reform, including a new duty to tell workers about their right to join a trade union, plus changes to union access, recognition and worker protections.
Plenty of SMEs will read that, conclude they are not unionised, and assume the reforms do not apply to them. That is understandable, but it is not quite enough any more. Managers do not need to become industrial relations specialists. They do need to know enough not to create risk with a poor reaction.
The same principle applies well beyond union rules. A manager who becomes defensive when an employee mentions joining a union, tries to deal informally with a serious harassment complaint, lets a performance issue drift for months without documenting anything, or responds badly to a grievance can turn a manageable issue into a much harder one.
Across most of these reforms, the biggest employment law risk in an SME is not a missing policy. It is what happens in the moment, when a manager has to make a judgement call and does not know what the sensible next step is.
Your Autumn HR Action Plan
The legal changes matter, but most employers do not need a fifty-point implementation programme. They need a clear view of what to do, and by when.
| Deadline | What To Do | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| During September | Review probation arrangements for recent starters and check whether managers are holding meaningful reviews | Employees approaching six months’ service around January 2027 may fall into the new unfair dismissal regime |
| Before 1 October | Review how you store and close grievance, disciplinary, performance and dismissal records. | Many Employment Tribunal claim deadlines will increase from three months to six |
| Before 30 October | Complete or refresh your sexual harassment risk assessment, looking at how the work is done rather than at the wording of the policy | Employers will need to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment |
| Before 30 October | Identify roles with regular customer, client, patient, contractor or service-user contact and decide how concerns involving third parties should be handled | Third-party harassment becomes a much more significant employer risk |
| Before 30 October | Brief managers on harassment reporting, escalation and the basics of the new trade union rules | The biggest risk is often a manager making the wrong call in the moment |
What Ties All Of This Together?
The legislation is changing, but the bigger shift is in what employers are expected to do: manage people properly, earlier and more consistently.
That does not mean turning every conversation into a formal HR process. Good people management usually stops things becoming formal at all. It means setting expectations properly, dealing with concerns while they are still small, giving managers the confidence to respond sensibly, and keeping records that reflect what happened rather than reconstructing events months later.
The same is true of harassment prevention. A business that knows where the risks sit, gives employees a clear route to raise concerns and backs managers to act is in a far stronger position than one with a perfectly drafted policy nobody knows how to use.
With probation, the aim is not to make dismissal easier. It is to avoid reaching the six-month point and finding that concerns have been building quietly for weeks with nobody addressing them.
That is where we think employers should put their attention over the next few months. Not on memorising every provision, but on checking that the people processes they believe are running are running in practice.
Not Sure Where The Gaps Are?
Cape Consulting helps SMEs and charities turn employment law changes into practical people processes that work in the real world.
If you want to review your probation process, manager capability, harassment procedures or wider people setup before the autumn changes land, talk to the team at Cape Consulting.