What the Employment Rights Act 2025 Means for Line Manager Training
The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent in late 2025, and its first major provisions came into force on 6 April 2026. For L&D and HR leaders, the question is no longer whether to act but how quickly training can be designed, deployed and evidenced.
The Act's changes are not abstract policy updates. They alter the daily decisions that line managers make: how they handle a new starter who is struggling, how they respond to a flexible working request, how they manage sickness absence from day one. In employment law, the actions of a manager are treated as the actions of the business. That principle has not changed. What has changed is the legal landscape those managers are now operating in.
The April 2026 changes that affect managers most
People Management identifies the removal of the two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection as the most significant change in the Act. From 6 April 2026, employees have day-one rights to protection from unfair dismissal. The House of Lords proposed replacing this with a six-month service requirement, but that amendment was rejected by the House of Commons.
This matters enormously for probation management. Previously, a manager could let a struggling new starter go within two years with relatively limited procedural risk. That is no longer the case. As People Management notes, being able to evidence that new recruits are told what is expected of them and receive training and support to achieve this will be crucial to justifying a fair dismissal.
The Act also makes statutory sick pay payable from day one of absence, removing the previous three waiting days. People Management confirms the government announced this change would come into force in April 2026. Managers who handle return-to-work conversations, trigger absence review processes or make informal judgements about whether someone is genuinely unwell are now operating in a higher-stakes environment from the very first day of employment.
Flexible working and family leave provisions also carry new weight. Managers who handle these requests informally, or who delay, dismiss or discourage them without following the correct process, expose their organisation to claims that previously required longer service to bring.
Why a policy email is not enough
Safecall's guidance on legal obligations for manager training is direct: manager training duties have grown significantly since 2023, with new legislation sharpening the consequences of getting it wrong.
A policy briefing email or a single HR induction session cannot build the judgement managers need to apply these changes correctly under pressure. Reading a policy tells a manager what the rule is. It does not help them recognise the moment in a real conversation when the rule applies, or give them practice in making the right call when a new starter pushes back, or when a flexible working request arrives at an inconvenient time.
The legal risk is compounded by the fact that managers are not a homogeneous group. A team leader promoted from within may have no formal people management training at all. A senior manager who has been in post for a decade may have deeply ingrained habits that predate the Act's changes. Both need training, but they need it designed differently.
There is also an evidential dimension. If a tribunal claim is brought, the organisation will need to demonstrate not just that a policy existed but that managers were trained on it, understood it and applied it. A SCORM or xAPI-tracked eLearning module, completed before the relevant provision came into force, provides exactly that kind of auditable record. A forwarded email does not.
What good Employment Rights Act manager training looks like
Effective ERA 2025 training for the April 2026 changes should be built around realistic scenarios, not abstract rules. A manager needs to practise what they would say when a new employee in their first week raises a concern about their workload, or when they need to initiate a performance conversation during a probation period without inadvertently creating a dismissal risk.
People Management is clear that line managers will benefit from training to enable them to explain the changes to their teams and implement the new requirements for probation periods, sickness absence and flexible work. That is a design brief, not just a recommendation. It points to training that is role-specific, grounded in the manager's actual context and focused on applied judgement rather than policy recall.
Key design principles for this kind of manager training employment law programme include:
- Scenario-based learning that places managers in realistic situations and asks them to make decisions, not just read information
- Branching consequences that show what happens when a manager gets a probation conversation right versus wrong
- Modular structure so that managers can complete the most urgent content first, with refreshers as further provisions come into force
- SCORM or xAPI tracking so that completion, scores and timestamps are recorded in your LMS and available as evidence
- Plain language that translates legal concepts into the language of day-to-day management
The staggered implementation window is an opportunity
People Management notes that the introduction of the new legislation is staggered, giving employers time to prepare. Not all provisions arrive at once. That is genuinely useful for L&D teams, because it means training can be phased to match the legislative timetable rather than attempting to cover everything in a single overwhelming module.
The April 2026 provisions around unfair dismissal and statutory sick pay are the most immediate priority. Flexible working and family leave changes, and further provisions expected later in 2026 and into 2027, can follow in subsequent modules. A modular approach also makes it easier to update content as secondary legislation and ACAS guidance clarifies how the Act will be interpreted in practice.
Alistair's take
The Employment Rights Act 2025 is the most significant change to UK employment law in a generation, and the training response needs to match that significance. In Neon's experience working with organisations across sectors, the gap between having a policy and having managers who can apply it confidently is where tribunal risk actually lives. A well-designed, scenario-based eLearning module, tracked through your LMS, does two things at once: it builds genuine capability and it creates the evidence trail that demonstrates due diligence. The staggered implementation timetable is a genuine opportunity to get this right in phases rather than rushing a single catch-all session that nobody retains.
Commission scenario-based manager training for the Employment Rights Act 2025
Neon Learning designs custom eLearning for L&D and HR teams who need auditable, scenario-based line manager induction training built around the specific provisions that affect your organisation. We work directly with you from brief to deployment, with SCORM and xAPI tracking built in.