Not Sure If You’re Compliant? What Employers Should Check After the 2026 Law Changes

Laws change, but for many small businesses, internal processes do not always keep up. That can become a problem when something that seemed minor at the time turns into a compliance issue later on.

Payroll settings may not have been updated properly. Contracts may no longer reflect how staff are actually working. Flexible working requests may be handled inconsistently. Managers may still be relying on informal conversations where the law increasingly expects a clearer process.

If you are not sure whether your business is compliant after the 2026 law changes, the best place to start is with a practical check of the basics.

Has your payroll actually been updated?

Payroll is one of the first places employers should check, partly because it is so easy to assume it is taken care of. If wages are being paid and the software is still running, it can look like everything is fine. But payroll compliance problems often come from exactly that kind of assumption.

After the 2026 changes, this is an area worth reviewing properly. National Minimum Wage rates increased from 1 April 2026. Then, from 6 April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay became payable from the first full day of sickness absence, the Lower Earnings Limit was removed for eligibility, and for some lower earners SSP is calculated at 80% of average weekly earnings or the flat weekly rate, whichever is lower.

That matters especially for small businesses with lean admin support, because outdated settings can stay in place without anyone noticing. If you have not checked your pay rates, sick pay settings, and payroll processes since April 2026, now is the time to review them and fix any gaps before they turn into complaints or compliance issues.

Do your contracts still match how your staff actually work?

A contract can be perfectly fine when it is first signed and still become out of date over time. That is especially common in small businesses, where roles evolve quickly and practical arrangements tend to shift as the business grows.

A staff member might have started on casual or variable hours but now works a fairly predictable pattern. Someone’s duties may have expanded well beyond the original job description. A temporary arrangement may have quietly become permanent. The paperwork might still describe one version of the role, while the reality on the ground looks quite different.

That matters because outdated contracts can make it harder to manage pay, leave, hours, and workplace expectations consistently. The question is not just whether you have contracts in place. It is whether those contracts still reflect what is actually happening in the business. If someone’s hours, duties, or working pattern have changed, it is worth reviewing the contract now and updating it where needed before a mismatch turns into a dispute.

Are probation and early performance issues being managed properly?

This is another area where small businesses often rely on instinct. A new hire does not seem like the right fit, performance is off, or there are concerns about attitude or reliability, so the business tries to deal with it quickly and informally. That can feel practical in the moment, but it is also where process gaps tend to show up.

A good compliance check here is not just whether the business has a probation clause in the contract. It is whether managers are actually using probation periods properly. Are expectations being set clearly? Are concerns being raised early? Is anything being documented? Or are performance issues mostly being handled through quick chats and gut-feel decisions?

That matters because probation does not remove legal risk. Some claims, including discrimination and certain automatically unfair dismissal claims, can arise from day one. Ordinary unfair dismissal is also moving earlier: for dismissals taking effect before 1 January 2027, the current two-year qualifying period still applies, but from 1 January 2027 the qualifying period is due to be reduced to six months.

If managers are still handling probation and early performance issues mostly through verbal conversations and snap decisions, that is usually a sign the process needs tightening. The safest next step is to make sure expectations are clear, concerns are documented early, and key decisions are confirmed in writing.

Are flexible working requests being handled consistently?

Flexible working is not really new for 2026, but it is still one of the clearest places where inconsistency can creep in. In a small business, these requests are often handled practically and informally, which is understandable. But that is also what makes them risky.

One employee asks for adjusted hours, another asks to work from home for part of the week, and a third wants a different start time. In a close-knit team, those decisions can quickly become personal, operational, and difficult to compare. One manager may agree because they want to be helpful. Another may say no because the timing feels inconvenient. Before long, similar requests are being treated differently without a clear reason.

The legal risk usually comes from inconsistency. The current Acas Code on flexible working has been in force since 6 April 2024, and employers are expected to deal with requests reasonably and fairly under the statutory framework. Requests can only be refused for permitted business reasons. That matters even more in a small business, where one decision can quickly become the benchmark for the next.

If requests are mostly being handled on instinct, it is worth putting a process in place now so decisions are considered consistently and explained properly.

Would your complaints process hold up if something serious happened?

A lot of small businesses believe they would deal with a complaint properly if one came in. The harder question is whether there is a real process behind that confidence, or whether the business is mostly relying on people to work it out as they go.

This is an important compliance check because complaints and misconduct issues often feel manageable until they suddenly are not. A concern about behaviour, a grievance, or a complaint between staff can escalate quickly if no one is quite sure who should handle it, what should be documented, or when the issue has become formal.

What matters here is not just whether the business intends to be fair, but whether it has a clear and usable process. Complaints should be raised to the right person, investigated promptly, documented properly, and concluded in writing. If your complaint process mostly lives in managers’ heads, or only appears when something difficult happens, it is worth tightening it now before a serious issue lands.

Could you actually show that you are compliant?

This is where the focus shifts from intention to evidence. Many employers believe they are doing the right thing, and they may well be. But compliance is not just about what the business thinks it is doing. It is also about whether there is enough in writing to show it later.

That includes pay records, leave records, working time records, contracts, written policies, and records of important decisions. For small businesses, this is often one of the biggest weak points. Information is spread across inboxes, payroll systems, messages, and conversations. One manager knows what happened, but it is not written down anywhere useful.

That is why recordkeeping deserves its own section. If your records are patchy, inconsistent, spread across different places, or mostly sitting with individual managers, that is usually a sign your compliance systems need a tidy-up. Start by pulling key records into one place and checking that payroll, leave, hours, and people-management decisions are all being recorded clearly enough to rely on later.

Have you introduced staff monitoring or workplace tech without checking the privacy side?

More employers are using CCTV, location tracking, clock-in apps, internal messaging systems, device monitoring, and performance tools as part of everyday management. None of that is particularly unusual anymore.

What is easy to miss, though, is that these tools often create a second compliance issue alongside the people-management one. Once a business starts collecting employee data, there is also a privacy question to answer. What is being collected? Why is it needed? Have staff been told clearly? Is the level of monitoring proportionate? ICO guidance on monitoring at work is built around exactly those themes: transparency, necessity, and proportionality.

This is not a brand-new 2026 compliance issue, but it remains an important one. Privacy obligations do not disappear just because a tool is useful. If your business is using monitoring or workplace tech, now is a good time to review what data is being collected, whether it is genuinely necessary, how clearly it has been explained to staff, and whether your contracts, policies, and processes have kept up.

Are managers making people decisions without enough guidance?

A business may have decent contracts, a reasonable grievance policy, and up-to-date payroll settings, but still have managers making day-to-day people decisions informally. Someone approves a flexible arrangement without documenting it. Someone else deals with misconduct through a string of messages. A performance issue is handled verbally and never written down. A complaint is treated as a quick personality clash instead of a formal issue.

That is where employers should sense-check whether the people making daily decisions actually know what a good process looks like. If important decisions are mostly being made on the fly, there is a good chance there is a compliance gap somewhere, even if the documents look fine on paper. A practical next step is to review what managers are being asked to decide, what guidance they have, and where simple templates or sign-off steps could make the process more consistent.

Start with the basics, then fix the obvious gaps

If you are not sure whether your business is compliant after the 2026 law changes, the good news is that you probably do not need to overhaul everything at once. In most cases, the right place to start is with the basics.

Check whether your payroll settings reflect the current rules. Review whether your contracts still match how your staff actually work. Make sure managers are handling probation, flexible working, and complaints through a consistent process. Look at your records and ask whether you could actually show compliance if you needed to. And if your business has introduced more staff monitoring or workplace tech, review whether the privacy side has kept up.

For most small businesses, that is where compliance really sits after the 2026 law changes - not in one dramatic legal issue, but in the smaller gaps between what the law expects and what the business is doing day to day. The key is to review those basics now, fix the obvious gaps early, and get advice where something is unclear before it turns into a bigger problem.

If you are not sure whether your contracts, payroll, or workplace processes are keeping up with the 2026 law changes, it can help to get advice early before a small issue turns into a bigger compliance problem. You can reach us on 08081347754 or at team@sprintlaw.co.uk for a free, no-obligations chat.