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October 2026 is shaping up to be the biggest single month of HR change for small UK employers, but it is only frightening if you leave it until October. I break it down into two separate dates you can actually diarise, so you stop treating it like one giant blob and start doing the sensible, proportionate actions that keep you protected.
First, we tackle 1 October: most employment tribunal claim time limits move from three months to six months across England, Wales and Scotland, which makes record-keeping, process notes and documented decisions twice as important. Then we get into the under-the-radar change many businesses will miss: expanded right to work checks under the Border Security Asylum and Immigration Act 2025. This is not just about employees. It can stretch to workers, individual subcontractors, substitutes and even down subcontracting chains, so I share a simple way to map who is doing work in your business’s name and where your gaps are.
Then we move to 30 October, the heavy hitter: the duty to prevent sexual harassment rises to taking all reasonable steps, alongside new third-party harassment liability where customers, clients and the public are involved, plus trade union written statement and access updates. I also flag four September consultation deadlines (ACAS disciplinary and grievance code, holiday pay enforcement, tipping code, workplace monitoring tech) and explain why small employers should respond so the rules are not written only for organisations with HR teams.
If you want a calm, practical plan, use the September audit I set out, then take the free HR health check at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash HR-health-check. Subscribe, share with another business owner, and leave a review so more people can find the support before the dates land.
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And if you do it before 1st April 2026, you’ll get a bonus 7 Pillar Strategy-on-a-Page, tailored to help you manage HR brilliantly for the year ahead.
Let’s be honest, culture shifts when people feel safe to speak up.
New rules mean you’re legally required to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment.
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Picture this, it's the first week of September. The out of office replies have stopped bouncing back, the diary has gone from tumbleweed to properly full again, and there's that particular feeling in a small business where everyone is back but nobody has quite got going yet. You've got a list. Somewhere on that list, in slightly smaller handwriting are the words October changes. You know they're coming. You've seen them mentioned. You've thought more than once that you really must have a proper look at that. Now picture the same desk on the 29th of October. Same list, three weeks of actual work stacked on top of it, and those two words have gone from a note to a problem. That's the version I'd like us all to avoid. Here's the good news, and I mean this. Nothing about October is a surprise, nothing about it is unmanageable, and September is exactly the right amount of runway. This month you can read a policy properly rather than skim it. You can book a training session for a date that suits people. You can have the slightly awkward conversation about that one client before it becomes a formal problem. So, this is your runway episode. What's actually coming in October? On which dates, what's happening this month that you can act on right now? And the calm September audit that gets you there standing up. Kettle on, let's get into it.
The welcome to the hive, welcome back to Buzzing About HR, the podcast that makes sense of the world of work. One honeycomb of good advice at a time. I'm Kate, your HR Queen Bee, and Hazel, our self-appointed well-being officer, is currently asleep across the doorway of my office in a way that means nobody is going anywhere without her express permission. She has also, as of this episode, been given her own segment, which I am already regretting. More on that shortly. October 2026 is the biggest single month of the Employment Rights Act rollout so far. That sounds dramatic, so let me immediately make it less so. It is not one date, it is two. It is not fifteen jobs, it is about five. And most of what you need is already half done in your business. It just needs finding, updating, and telling people about. Here's my promise for the next 20 minutes or so. No jargon, no doom, no fear. I'll split October into its two real dates so you can diarise them properly, and there are two changes on the first of them. Not one, I'll flag the September deadlines most people will miss, and I'll leave you with a September audit you can genuinely work through over a few sittings. Stay informed, not panicked. Let's go. The buzz. Right, first things first, the single most useful thing I can do for you today is stop you treating October as one big blob of change. It isn't. There are two separate dates and they carry completely different things. The
first date is the first of October. That's when the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims rises from three months to six months, and that is England, Wales and Scotland together on the same day. You may have seen the 9th of November attached to Scotland, and it is a real date, but it is narrower than people think. It is the date breach of employment contract claims in Scotland move across. Everything else is the first of October, wherever your people are. Now, that sounds like a technical lawyers only change, and it isn't. It quietly doubles the window in which someone can decide to bring a claim about something that happened on your watch. The disgruntled lever who would once have run out of road in January now has until April. Which means your notes, your emails, your process records, and your reasons for decisions all need to hold up for twice as long. That's it. That's the change. It's a paperwork and process change dressed as a legal one. But the 1st of October carries a second change.
And this is the one almost nobody has on their radar. So if you only take one thing from today, take this. Right to work checks expand, and they expand a very long way. Section 48 of the Border Security Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 comes into force on the 1st of October. Right now, the duty to check somebody's right to work bites on employees. People on your payroll. From the 1st of October, it stretches out to cover workers, individual subcontractors, and businesses running online matching platforms. Let me put that in real terms, because individual subcontractor is not how anybody describes their Tuesday cleaner. It means the self-employed cleaner, the courier, the chair renter in the salon, the subcontracted trades on site, the person the agency sent, and the substitute who turned up instead of the person you actually booked. That last one deserves a second, because there's a layer here that goes further than most people expect. Liability can reach you even where you have no direct contract with the person doing the work. If you subcontract work out and your subcontractor subcontracts it on again, or if the contract lets somebody send a substitute, the checks need to run down that chain. You can end up carrying the risk for somebody you have never met and never hired. Now the obvious question. And it's the right one. Does this mean you have to start doing right-to-work checks on your accountant? No. Genuinely self-employed people running their own business, trading in their own name or through their own company, contracting directly with you as a customer, sit outside this. But here's the sting. The label on the contract does not decide it. The reality of the arrangement does. So if you have people described as self-employed who work only for you on your rotor, doing your work in your name, that is precisely the arrangement this is aimed at. Two, honest caveats, because I'd rather tell you what's still moving than pretend it's all settled. The codes of practice are still in draft, and although there's a draft updated employer's guide out, the operative version is still the older one, so some of the practical detail will firm up over the next few weeks, and this applies to new engagements from the 1st of October and to repeat checks falling due after that date. Nobody is asking you to recheck your whole workforce by breakfast on the 1st. So what's the September job? It's smaller than you fear. Write down everybody who does work in your business's name, not just the payroll. Then note which of them you have never checked. For most small businesses, the payroll column is fine and everything next to it is blank, and that blank is the whole job. I'm doing a full episode note and a proper written piece on this later in the month because it deserves more than five minutes. The
second date is the 30th of October, and this one is the heavy hitter. Three things land together. One, the duty to prevent sexual harassment rises from taking reasonable steps to taking all reasonable steps. One extra word, a much higher and more active bar. It stops being, did you have a policy? and becomes, did you actually do the things a sensible employer would do? So risk assess, train, communicate, provide a reporting route and act on what comes in. Two, a brand new third-party harassment liability. That's harassment of your team by people who don't work for you. Customers, clients, contractors, suppliers, members of the public. And note the scope because it's wider than the first one. The All Reasonable Steps upgrade sits on the preventative duty about sexual harassment. This one covers harassment related to any protected characteristic. So race, disability, age, religion, or belief, sex, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment are all in scope. This is the one that catches employers out, and it's big for anyone in hospitality, retail, care, or any world where your people meet the public. It's important enough that it gets its own episode next week, so I'm parking the detail there. 3. The trade union changes. A new written statement telling workers about their right to join a trade union plus new union access rights. For most small employers, this is a document job rather than a drama, but it does mean your written statement of terms and your onboarding PAC need a look. And a small related note since the 25th of August, electronic voting has been available in trade union ballots where the employer and the union agree. Then there's tipping. If your business handles tips, service charges or gratuities, there's a duty to consult your workers before you introduce or change a TIPS policy, and that's due by the end of 2026. And here's the bit worth knowing, because it moved in August. The revised draft statutory code of practice on the fair and transparent distribution of tips opened for consultation on the 19th of August, and it closes at 11.59 pm on Tuesday, the 29th of September. So this isn't Watch This Space anymore. It's a live document open now, closing inside this month. If you run a pub, a restaurant, a salon, a delivery business, or anything where tips get shared out, read it and tell them what actually works behind a bar on a Saturday night. And just so it's on your radar rather than your to-do list, further out we've got the 1st of January 2027. When the unfair dismissal qualifying period drops to six months, the compensation cap for unfair dismissal goes, and fire and rehire becomes automatically unfair. That's a 2027 conversation. Diarise it, don't panic about it. So that's October. Two dates, the first of October for tribunal time limits and right to work checks, and the 30th of October for harassment and unions.
Right, one more story before we leave the buzz, and it's from the summer. I think it matters far more than the numbers in it suggest. The Fair Work Agency has had its first conviction. Peter McGwigan, 56 of Telford, was convicted at Coventry Magistrates Court on the 15th of July of acting as an unlicensed gangmaster, contrary to Section 12 of the Gangmasters Licensing Act 2004. Between January 2022 and June 2023, he supplied around 125 workers to an abattoir near Kenilworth in Warwickshire without a valid licence. Now let me be honest about the sentence because I'd rather you heard it straight from me than in a breathless headline. He was fined £1,000 with a £400 victim surcharge and £85 costs. £1,000? That is not a number that will frighten anybody, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Two things do matter. The first is the twelve-month labour market enforcement order that came with it, and that is the actual teeth, because breaching one of those is itself an offence. The second is the history. He was investigated and warned about needing a license in 2017. His license was revoked in 2019 for failing the fit and proper test. He carried on anyway. The agency's senior investigating officer put it plainly. He was fully aware of the requirement to hold a gangmaster's license, yet he repeatedly chose to ignore those obligations. So why am I telling this to a business with nine employees and no gangmaster anywhere near it? Because the Fair Work Agency only soft launched on the 7th of April this year, and it has gone from brand new body to first conviction and first enforcement order inside three months. It is not a helpline. It prosecutes. And its remit is widening towards the things ordinary small employers actually do, starting with holiday pay. Hold that thought because it comes back in about two minutes. Hazel is under the desk with her chin on my foot, and the subtitles read Warned in 2017, license taken off him in 2019, still at it in 2023. At what point does I didn't know stop being a defence and start being a hobby? That's the bit, isn't it? Nobody in that story was confused. They were hoping the hive check. Now
let's talk about the things happening this month in September that almost everybody is going to miss. Because there's a habit of only looking at the changes that have a big red deadline attached, and these ones don't shout and they matter. The first one is genuinely a gift, and I don't say that about consultations very often. ACAS has published a draft new code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures. This is the first proper rewrite since 2009, so it's not a tweak, it's a rethink. The consultation is open now and it closes at 11.59 pm on Wednesday, the 23rd of September. That is this month. What's in it? A strong push towards resolving things informally and early. Mediation and facilitated conversations, named as real options rather than afterthoughts. Much less adversarial language, so concerns rather than allegations, which sounds like a small thing and absolutely is not when you're the person receiving the letter. Clearer expectations around suspension, which has been a muddle for years. New provisions on avoiding discrimination and making reasonable adjustments during a process. Accompaniment treated as good practice even at informal meetings. And the word worker used throughout rather than employee. Here's the bit I want you to hear. You can respond to that consultation. You, a small employer, not just law firms and trade bodies. And here's the heart of it, if the only people who reply to a consultation about disciplinary and grievance procedures are large organisations with HR departments, then the code that comes out of it gets written for large organizations with HR departments, and the rest of us live with it for the next 17 years. If you have ever thought this process is designed for a business ten times my size, this is your window to say so to the people writing it before it's written. It takes an evening. Deadline is the 23rd of September. And here's the thing I most want you to see, because I don't think anybody else is packaging it up. That ECAS code is not the only consultation closing this month. There are four of them, and every one of them shuts inside September. Holiday Pay compliance and enforcement closes at 11 59 PM on the 22nd of September, and that one is about how the Fair Work Agency will police holiday pay. After the story I just told you, that's the one I'd read first. The ACAS draft code closes at 11.59 pm on the 23rd. The revised tipping code closes at 11.59 pm on the 29th. And the consultation on workplace monitoring technologies, so tracking, cameras, and anything using technology to monitor, manage or make decisions about people, closes at 11.59 pm on the 30th. Four deadlines, one month, and anybody can respond to any of them. Not just law firms, not just trade bodies. You. It takes about 10 minutes, and I promise you the people writing these rules do not hear anywhere near enough from businesses with nine employees and no HR department. If the only voices in the room have a compliance team down the corridor, the rules get written for businesses with a compliance team down the corridor, and the rest of us live with them. The last thing is quieter. The consultation on zero hours and casual workers closed on the 25th of August, which means guaranteed hours and shift notice rules are the next big thing coming down the track for anyone who runs a rotor. I'm not going to promise you dates because there aren't any yet, and I'd rather tell you nothing than tell you something I'd have to correct. But if your business runs on flexible shifts, casual workers, or zero hours arrangements, this is the one to keep half an eye on. Watch this space and start thinking now about whether you actually know how many hours your casual people regularly work, because that's the question that's coming. The
sting. Here's the part worth sitting with gently. The businesses that get caught out by a date like the 30th of October are almost never the ones that didn't care. In 18 years of doing this, I have genuinely never met an employer who thought, I'll ignore that and see what happens. Not once. What I meet over and over are people who meant to get to it. Who knew it was coming, fully intended to sort it, and simply ran out of runway because a real business got in the way. That's the sting. It isn't negligence, it's arithmetic. Good intentions minus available hours equals a missed obligation, and the tribunal doesn't have a box on the form for meant to. And here's what makes it sharper this year. October is not one job, it's a cluster, and it lands in the same month as your autumn push, your Christmas planning if you're in retail or hospitality, and everybody's annual leave being used up before the year turns. Trying to overhaul your harassment approach in the third week of October, while the actual business is at its loudest, is how well-run companies end up with badly written policies nobody has read. So, the honest flip side, and it's a genuinely cheerful one. The whole of October's risk can be diffused in September by a business owner with a notebook and a couple of quiet mornings. Not a compliance department, not a retainer, a notebook, two mornings, and a willingness to be honest about which bits are actually true in your business rather than true in your handbook. That's the whole point of this episode. October will be exactly as hard as September was easy. The Growl. Hazel says the quiet part. Right, new feature. You've heard me mention Hazel, my German short haired pointer,
born January 2024, self-appointed well-being officer of this business and possessor of absolutely no filter whatsoever. Now, before anybody emails me, she cannot talk. Obviously. What she has is a face, and I have been reading that face for two and a half years, and there is always a caption running along the bottom of it. So that is the segment. I read you Hazel's subtitles, then I give you the version you are allowed to put in an email. She is in the doorway. Ears up, one eyebrow, the full performance. Subtitles on. Everyone's going to be terribly busy in October. Do you know what makes October busier? Doing October in October. You have known about this for over a year. It's been in the newsletters, it's been on the actual government website, it's been on this podcast at a volume that has affected my naps. We didn't realise is not a defence, it's a shrug wearing a lanyard. Book the hour. It is one hour. I get walked for longer than that, and I don't even have a business to run. Subtitles off. And I would like the record to show that I have never spoken to a hive mate like that in my life. What I would say, and I want to be fair here, is that nobody is leaving this late on purpose. But these changes have been publicly known for a long time. The obligations are clear and written down. And the difference between a calm October and a genuinely horrible one is roughly one focused hour of your attention this month. Most of us can find one hour. What we can't do is find it on the 29th of October. Which is, I notice, the same sentence as the one running under the dog, with better manners and a warmer jumper on. She has gone back to the doorway. She usually does once she has made her point. The waggle dance. So let's turn all of that into something you can actually do. This is your September audit and its five areas.
Work through them over a few sittings with a brew. You do not need to do this in one go. One, your policy. Find your anti-harassment policy and read it as if you were a new starter on day one. Is it current? Does it say what harassment actually is? Does it tell someone plainly what to do and who to tell? And critically, does it cover harassment by customers, clients and contractors, not just by colleagues? If it doesn't, that's your single biggest October gap. While you're in there, check your written statement of terms and your onboarding pack for the trade union right to join information you'll need from the 30th. 2. Training. Ask yourself honestly when anyone last talked to your team about any of this. Not sent it, talked about it, your staff need to know what harassment is and that they're entitled to be protected. Your managers need to know how to receive a report calmly, take it seriously, and act on it. We trained our people is one of the strongest pieces of evidence there is that you took all reasonable steps, and a policy nobody has been walked through is intent without practice. 3. Your reporting route. This is the one I'd most want you to look at. Ask yourself if someone on your team had a concern about a senior person in the business, where would they take it? If the honest answer is to that senior person's mate, you don't have a reporting route, you have a corridor. People need somewhere that feels genuinely safe and confidential. That's exactly what SafeVoice is for, an independent, confidential speakup route that gives your team somewhere real to go and gives you a proper record that you took it seriously. Have a look at safevoice.co.uk. We'll go into this properly next week. 4. Your records. With time limits doubling from the 1st of October, pull one recent disciplinary grievance or absence file at random and ask a simple question. Could I explain every decision in here to a stranger in six months' time using only what's written down? Dates, notes, who decided what and why. Decisions rest on evidence and documentation, not hopes and vibes. 5. Your contracts and documents. Statements of terms, handbooks, your tips policy if you have one. And on tips, the revised draft code is out for consultation until the 29th of September. So this is the month to read it. Note where your gaps are, and if TIPs are part of your world, say something back. And one thing that isn't an audit item but has four deadlines attached. Respond to at least one of this month's consultations. Holiday Pay Compliance and Enforcement by the 22nd. The ACUS Draft Disciplinary and Grievance Code by the 23rd. The revised tipping code by the 29th. All at 11.59 pm. Say what it's actually like running a process, or a rotor, or a tips pot in a business your size. That's not homework, that's influence. Oh, and while I'm here, one teaser. Something is coming for your managers. Cake, coffee and compliance is an hour of proper manager training, Tuesdays at 9.30, starting the thirteenth of October. Full details are at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash managers, and I'll tell you all about it soon. The Swarm Mythbuster Parade. Let's clear up four things I know I'll hear this month. Myth
one. It all happens on the first of October. No, the first of October is tribunal time limits, and that one covers England, Wales and Scotland together. The ninth of November is a narrower Scottish date for breach of employment contract claims. The harassment duty and the union changes are the thirtieth of October. If you diarise one date you will genuinely miss a duty, so please put both in. Myth two. We're too small for most of this to apply. Subtitles briefly. There's no small business exemption, there's a small business excuse. Only one of those two things appears in the legislation. Blunt. Also entirely correct. What does scale with your size is the word reasonable. Nobody expects a five-person cafe to do what a 200-person firm does. They expect you to have thought about your risks and done the sensible, proportionate things about them. Myth three. The tipping code got pulled, so there's nothing to do about tips at the moment. Not anymore, there isn't. The revised draft code of practice on the fair and transparent distribution of tips opened on the 19th of August and closes at 11.59 p.m. on Tuesday, the 29th of September. So there is something to do, and it's Reddit and respond to it. The duty to consult your workers before setting or changing a TIPS policy is still coming by the end of the year. Myth 4. Consultations are for lawyers and big companies, there's no point me replying. This is the one that quietly costs small employers the most. Consultations are answered by whoever bothers to answer them. If small employers stay silent on a code of practice about disciplinary and grievance procedures, the code gets written around organisations that have an HR team down the corridor. You have until the 23rd of September, and your experience is exactly the evidence they're short of. The honeycomb, your quick action list. Six things in order, and none of them need a big budget. 1. Put both October
dates in the diary properly. The 1st of October for tribunal time limits and the expanded right to work checks, which covers England, Wales and Scotland, and the 30th of October for the harassment duty and the union changes. If you employ people in Scotland, add the 9th of November for breach of employment contract claims. 2. Write out everybody who does work in your business's name, not just the payroll. And note which of them has never had a right to work check. That one list is most of the work on the right to work change. 3. Read your anti-harassment policy as a new starter would and check it covers third parties as well as colleagues. 4. Book something in for training your managers so it happens on a date that suits people rather than a date the panic chooses. 5. Look hard at your reporting route and ask whether a frightened person would actually use it. Take a look at safe voice at safevoice.co.uk. 6. Pull one live file at random and check it would still explain itself in six months because from October it may well have to. 7. Respond to at least one of September's consultations before it closes. Holiday pay enforcement on the 22nd. The ACAS draft, disciplinary and grievance code on the 23rd, the revised tipping code on the 29th. Workplace monitoring on the 30th. And the one that tells you which of these you actually need to worry about first. Take the free HR health check at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash HR-health-check. Five to seven minutes instant red, amber and green, and a report in your inbox. Flying the hive. So that's your runway. October is the biggest month in your HR year, and it is completely survivable if September does its job. Two dates, not one, and two changes on the first of them. Six areas to audit, not fifty. Four consultations you can actually influence before the month is out. And a horizon note about guaranteed hours for anyone running a rotor. Here's what I'd love you to take away. This isn't a compliance scramble, it's a tidy up you were going to be glad of anyway. Every single thing on that audit list makes your business better run and your people better looked after, whether or not a date in October existed. A policy people have read, managers who know what to do, a safe way to speak up and records that tell the truth. That's not red tape. That's a decent place to work with the paperwork to prove it. Next week we go deep on the big one, all reasonable steps and the new third-party harassment duty, with the real scenarios that make it land. If you'd like a clear picture of where you actually stand before the month turns, start with the free HR Health Check at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk slash hr-health-check. It's the fastest way to find out which of October's changes are genuinely your problem and which ones you've already got covered. Or drop us a line at buzz at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk. No pressure, no jargon, just a proper conversation. Until next time, keep buzzing and take care of your people. Kettle on, standards up.
