Employment Rights Act changes: what hair salon owners need to know

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is the biggest rewrite of UK employment law in a generation, and it lands hardest on exactly the kind of employer who runs a hair salon: a small team, several part-timers, a Saturday junior on variable hours, maybe someone on a zero-hours arrangement for busy weeks. The Act is not arriving in one go. It is being switched on in phases through 2026 and 2027, so some rules already apply to your salon today, some arrive on dates already announced, and some are still being shaped by consultation.

Most of what ranks for this question is written by employment lawyers for HR departments. This guide translates the timeline for a salon with two to ten people on the payroll: what is already in force, what is coming, and what to actually do this quarter. It covers staff you employ; a genuinely self-employed chair renter is outside most of it, as we explain below. And because several of the new rules reward tidy scheduling records, it helps that a free booking and staff schedule tool for hair salons keeps each stylist's hours and appointments visible in one place, though to be clear, no booking software makes you compliant with employment law, ours included.

One framing note before the dates: everything below was checked in October 2026 on GOV.UK and Acas, the rollout dates for 2027 are as announced at that time, and the government has already moved dates once. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Already in force: what changed in 2026

Statutory sick pay from day one (since 6 April 2026)

The change you have probably already felt in payroll. For sickness starting on or after 6 April 2026, two things changed at once, as set out on the Acas summary of the Employment Rights Act 2025:

• The three waiting days are gone. Statutory sick pay (SSP) is now payable from the first day of sickness absence, not the fourth.
• The lower earnings limit is gone. Staff who earn too little to have qualified before, typically your Saturday junior, an assistant on a few shifts a week or an apprentice on the apprentice minimum wage, are now entitled to SSP too. They receive the lower of 80% of their average weekly earnings or the standard weekly SSP rate (check the current figure on GOV.UK's statutory sick pay pages, as it changes each tax year).

For a salon, the practical effect is that a single day off sick now costs you a day of SSP for almost everyone on the team, including people who previously got nothing. That argues for two boring but useful habits: record every sickness absence from day one (who, which dates, when they told you), and build a small sickness line into your costings rather than being surprised by it. If you employ an apprentice, note that they are now squarely inside SSP; our guide to hiring an apprentice hairdresser covers what else changes with young staff.

Day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave (since 6 April 2026)

Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave are now day-one rights: the old requirement of 26 weeks' service for paternity leave has gone, per the government's implementation timeline. A stylist you hired last month can take paternity leave for a baby due next month. In a small team that is mostly a planning question: the earlier you hear about it, the easier the column cover is to arrange.

Records and enforcement: the quiet changes that bite

Two less publicised April 2026 changes matter for salons:

• Holiday records. You must now keep records showing annual leave entitlement and holiday pay for your workers, retained for six years. If your "system" is a paper diary and memory, that no longer stands up. The calculations themselves are covered in our guide to holiday entitlement for salon staff.
• The Fair Work Agency opened on 7 April 2026, pulling enforcement of minimum wage, SSP and holiday pay into one body with inspection powers. Small employers are not exempt, and hair and beauty is a sector enforcement bodies already watch because of its history with employment-status disputes.

Also in force since 1 October 2026: the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims has doubled from three months to six. A dismissal or wages dispute now has a longer tail, which is one more reason to keep written records of warnings, hours and pay.

Coming in 2027: the bigger changes

Unfair dismissal after six months, not two years (1 January 2027)

Today an employee generally needs two years' service to claim ordinary unfair dismissal. From 1 January 2027, that qualifying period drops to six months, and the cap on unfair dismissal compensation is removed. The original plan was a day-one right; that was changed to six months during the Act's passage through Parliament, so if you read "day one unfair dismissal" in older coverage, it is out of date.

For salons this is the big cultural shift. The informal "it is not working out" exit at month ten, with no process, becomes a genuine tribunal risk. From 2027 you will need a fair reason and a fair process for dismissing anyone past six months: documented expectations, review conversations, warnings in writing. The cheapest fix is upstream, in recruitment and a properly used probation period with real check-ins, which is exactly the ground covered in our guide to hiring a stylist for your hair salon.

Zero-hours and low-hours reforms: guaranteed hours, shift notice, cancellation pay

This is the part of the Act written with workforces like salons in mind, and it is planned for 2027 with the exact commencement to be confirmed after consultation (the government consulted employers on the detail over summer 2026). Three linked rights are coming for zero-hours and "low-hours" workers:

• A guaranteed-hours offer. After each reference period (expected to be around 12 weeks, to be confirmed in regulations), you must offer a contract guaranteeing at least the hours the worker actually worked over that period. The worker can decline and stay flexible, but the offer must be made.
• Reasonable notice of shifts, and of changes to shifts.
• Compensation for cancelled or curtailed shifts at short notice, proportionate to what was cancelled.

Translate that to a salon: if your "Saturday only" junior has in practice worked Saturdays plus two weekday afternoons for three months, you will have to offer those hours as a guarantee. And the habit of texting "quiet day tomorrow, do not come in" the night before will carry a price tag. None of this is in force yet, and the fine print is not final, but the direction is clear enough to start fixing rota discipline now; our guide to staff rotas in a hair salon covers notice habits and fair scheduling in detail.

Also pencilled in for 2027

Briefly, because the details are still settling: dismissal-and-rehire to force new terms ("fire and rehire") becomes automatically unfair in most cases from January 2027; a new unpaid statutory bereavement leave right, including for pregnancy loss, is due during 2027; and flexible-working refusals will need a written business reason. Dates for these may still move.

Who this covers, and who it does not

Two scope points salon owners regularly get wrong:

• Employees and workers, not chair renters. The Act strengthens rights for people you employ or engage as workers. A genuinely self-employed stylist renting a chair gets none of this from you: no SSP, no guaranteed-hours offer, no unfair dismissal claim. The flip side is that the boundary must be real, and HMRC and tribunals look at facts, not labels. If your "renter" works your rota on your prices, these reforms raise the stakes of getting it wrong; see our guide to renting out a chair in a UK hair salon.
• Great Britain, not Northern Ireland. Employment law is devolved in Northern Ireland, so the Employment Rights Act 2025 broadly applies in England, Scotland and Wales. NI salon owners should follow nibusinessinfo.co.uk and the Labour Relations Agency instead, as NI runs its own reform programme on its own timetable.

What to do this quarter

No panic, no consultant retainer needed yet. Five concrete jobs for the next three months:

1. Check your sickness admin is day-one ready. Record every absence from the first day, pay SSP from day one to everyone including low earners, and write a one-page sickness policy saying how staff report in and what gets paid.
2. Reread every contract. Do the written hours match reality? Anyone working regular hours on a "casual" or zero-hours contract is exactly who the 2027 reforms target; moving them onto honest contracted hours now is cheaper than a forced guaranteed-hours offer later.
3. Fix rota notice habits. Publish rotas further ahead, stop same-day cancellations of shifts, and keep the published rota as a record. You will likely be paying for short-notice cancellations from 2027 anyway.
4. Tighten probation and reviews. With six-month unfair dismissal from January 2027, a probation period you actually run, with dated written reviews, becomes your main protection on hiring mistakes.
5. Sort your records. Six years of holiday and pay records, sickness logs, rota history, signed contracts. A salon that can show its paperwork wins most disputes before they start.

On the scheduling side, this is where decent tooling quietly helps: in ViteUneCoupe's free plan each team member has their own schedule and column on the salon's booking page, so who was due in, and when, is visible in one place rather than scattered across texts. It is a booking diary, not HR or payroll software: contracts, SSP and guaranteed-hours offers stay with you, your accountant or an adviser such as the National Hair & Beauty Federation, whose members get employment-law support aimed at this exact sector.

A final reminder: this article is general information, not legal advice. The 2027 dates are as announced in October 2026 and the government can, and does, move them; check GOV.UK or Acas before acting on a date.

Frequently asked questions

Is statutory sick pay really paid from the first day off sick now?

Yes. For sickness absence starting on or after 6 April 2026, the three waiting days were removed, so SSP is payable from day one. The lower earnings limit was removed at the same time, so low-paid and part-time salon staff who previously earned too little to qualify are now entitled, at the lower of 80% of their average weekly earnings or the standard weekly rate.

When does unfair dismissal protection change?

From 1 January 2027 (as announced in October 2026), the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal drops from two years to six months, and the cap on compensation is removed. The original proposal of a day-one right was dropped during the Act's passage. From then on, dismissing anyone with more than six months' service needs a fair reason and a documented process.

Do the zero-hours rules mean I cannot use casual Saturday staff any more?

No. You can still engage casual and variable-hours staff. From 2027 (exact date to be confirmed), you will have to offer a contract guaranteeing roughly the hours they actually worked over a reference period, give reasonable notice of shifts, and compensate shifts cancelled at short notice. Workers can decline the guaranteed hours and stay flexible; the obligation is to make the offer.

Does any of this apply to a self-employed chair renter?

Not if the self-employment is genuine. SSP, guaranteed hours, unfair dismissal and the other employment rights in the Act attach to employees and workers, not to a stylist who truly runs her own business from a rented chair. But the test is the reality of the arrangement, not the label on it, and the new Fair Work Agency makes misclassification riskier than before.

Does the Employment Rights Act apply in Northern Ireland?

Broadly no. Employment law is devolved, so the Act applies in England, Scotland and Wales, while Northern Ireland sets its own rules on its own timetable. NI salon owners should check nibusinessinfo.co.uk and the Labour Relations Agency for the equivalent position.