Is Employment Law at a crossroads?
The scope of UK employment law has never been greater, and since 2020, the roadmap of work has been completely redrawn. Hybrid, remote and flexible working models are now the norm, talent moves fluidly across international borders, platform work and the gig economy maintain steady growth, and artificial intelligence (AI) touches recruitment, performance, and operations. In this environment, employment law can no longer be reactive. But how can employment legislation support a duty of care and flexible working without undermining accountability for performance and conduct, even when talent is mobile?
Employment Rights Act 2025
The Employment Rights Bill was an opportunity for forward thinking the ever-changing landscape of the world of work. Some aspects were covered, but there was significant debate around whether it could have gone further. That said, on 18 December 2025, the Bill received Royal Assent, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 is now in force, with elements of it effective immediately.
With this fresh look legislative infrastructure, now is the time for employment law to become a strategic driver that shapes the future of work whilst ensuring fairness and equality are safeguarded.
Legal frameworks must adapt, and UK employers and HR leaders must review how they support flexibility without undermining accountability. They must consider what “duty of care” really looks like in dispersed workforces, and how fairness and inclusion can be upheld across borders when operational reality is global, but compliance obligations are domestic.
Flexible working
Recently, the UK’s flexible working regime has undergone major modernisation. Employees can request flexibility from day one, make two requests in 12 months, and expect a decision within two months.
This demonstrates a clear policy shift towards mainstream flexibility, with a framework that supports hybrid work. But this agility demands more than just statutory box-ticking. Parameters for hybrid working have to be transparent, contracts and policies need clarity on place of work, availability windows, equipment responsibilities, and data/security expectations.
The law permits refusal of flexible requests on prescribed business grounds, and more recent changes mean employers must explain the grounds for any ‘reasonable’ refusal. However, tribunals increasingly look for evidence‑based process, so a well-documented outcomes framework – addressing objectives, cadence, equitable allocation of opportunities – is a legal and cultural safeguard.
Hybrid working succeeds with trust: employees need to know the rules; managers need to have the tools to coach and measure outcomes. This is how flexibility becomes a talent advantage and not a litigation risk.
Hybrid working is here to stay, and prioritised by many employees. Long-term hybrid working employees need to feel safe, respected, and not excessively ‘watched’, so a policy and procedure that fosters robust duty of care, grounded in data protection and wellbeing norms, is necessary to reduce conflict, strengthen engagement, and signal a mature culture.
Cross‑border flexibility is a magnet for talent. Getting mobility right avoids reputational harm, government enforcement, and inequity, turning global reach into innovation rather than exposure. “Work from anywhere” invites complex questions, from tax residence, PAYE, social security benefits, immigration status, to permanent establishment risk. HMRC’s guidance on globally mobile employees and PAYE highlights the interaction of residence rules and payroll obligations, especially under the post‑April 2025 regime. Practical resources explain how physical work abroad can trigger host country taxation and reporting even when contracts and pay remain UK centric. Social security follows the “pay where you work” principle, with A1 certificates and bilateral agreements mitigating double liabilities, but not eliminating them. Discrimination legislation, harassment prevention and whistleblowing protections then overlay local legal specifics on leave, notice, severance, and benefits.
While this creates consistency in principle and compliance in practice, employers must audit equal‑pay risks to balance market reality with fairness across jurisdictions. They must undertake quarterly immigration reviews, consider tax/PAYE and social security impacts for remote or short‑term overseas work, and utilise HMRC materials and reputable mobility insights for accurate guidance.
Duty of care
Duty of care now extends beyond the office. Health & safety risk assessments must include home workspaces and lone working. Wellbeing policies should tackle burnout and blurred boundaries. Cyber maintenance is integral to safe systems of work.
Employers must establish a lawful basis (often legitimate interests rather than consent), minimise data, and communicate clearly.
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) 2025 guidance on employment records clarifies lawful bases, special category conditions, retention, and accountability which is critical for remote‑heavy data flows. This reinforces that monitoring must be necessary, proportionate, fair, and transparent, with a Data Protection Impact Assessment for high‑risk activities.
The ICO emphasises that workers’ have a heightened expectation of privacy at home. Whilst there is no explicit “right to disconnect” in the UK, the government remains committed to implementing the right to switch off. So businesses could arrange quiet hours for workers, protect breaks and ensure escalation pathways in anticipation of policy shifts. This will strengthen trust by demonstrating forward thinking, making the business more attractive to employees and future candidates, and support recruitment and retention strategies.
Artificial Intelligence & GDPR
AI already touches hiring, performance, task allocation, and planning. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act, now in force and phasing obligations since 2025 to 2027, classifies many tools used in employment as high‑risk with strict requirements on oversight, data quality, bias testing, transparency, and record‑keeping, and bans practices like emotion recognition and certain biometric inferences. UK employers with EU workforces or whose AI outputs affect workers in the EU, will be caught by the Act’s extraterritorial scope.
Domestically, ICO guidance already treats solely automated decisions with legal or similar significant effects as restricted under UK GDPR, demanding human review and DPIAs. But employers could adopt some of the principles, like identifying recruitment screening, promotion, termination, performance scoring, or task allocation systems as “high‑risk”, and applying appropriate controls even if it is adopted as best practice.
Credible AI governance unlocks productivity and insight while reducing litigation and morale risk, transforming AI from a compliance headache into a genuine innovation lever. Policies could encompass protection such as mandating that “humans” participate in the process, and ensuring lawful bases, special category data limits, updated privacy notices, and subject‑rights pathways.
Meanwhile, reforms around predictable work patterns have been politicised: the 2023 Act created a right to request predictability, but subsequent government plans pivoted toward stronger rights within the Employment Rights Bill. The UK’s debate over a statutory right to disconnect has been parked, but the duty to offer guaranteed hours has complicated matters. Employers need to: review platform or contingent arrangements against Uber’s control/dependency factors; ensure pay, holiday, and working‑time compliance where “worker” status is plausible; introduce rota notice standards, cancellation pay and “contact windows”; and mirror best practice in jurisdictions with right‑to‑disconnect and predictable hours rules.
Duty of care goes beyond physical and encompasses digital and psychological domains. Wellbeing and safety are not “soft issues”, but legal obligations with reputational and productivity impacts.
The crossroad for employment law
Like most legislation, employment law reacts to systemic shifts. It should be an enabler, but currently, is at a crossroads.
In fairness, UK employment law has proven resilient and adaptive, but the pace of change challenges its responsiveness. In some areas equal treatment, data protection, and whistleblowing frameworks are relatively mature. In others, such as platform work status, algorithmic decision making and cross‑border flexibilities, the law is catching up.
The question is less “Is the law perfect?” and more “Are we leveraging it strategically?”. When formulating policies and procedure framework, employers and HR must move from general compliance to considered and proactive design, instead of waiting for legislation to catch up.
So create policies that anticipate, not just comply. Build hybrid frameworks, global minimum standards, AI governance, and data privacy policies and procedures so that legal risk is reduced and employee experience enhanced. Without clear expectations and consistent processes, hybrid models can erode accountability and equality.
Organisations must invest in leadership and management capability, document decisions, use structured processes and maintain auditable records.
Fairness and agility are not opposing forces. With the right design, they reinforce each other. Hybrid work thrives when expectations are clear and processes are fair. Global mobility works when standards are universal, but compliance is local. AI accelerates innovation when governance earns trust. Now is the opportunity to embrace law not as a constraint, but as a lever to embed clarity, accountability and human‑centric safeguards. If that is done well then employers won’t just avoid claims, but build a culture where people do their best work wherever they are, and where innovation is possible and principled. Global fairness is a competitive differentiator; in a borderless talent market, coherent global standards developed with local compliance overlay, reduces friction and builds trust.
Good governance is not just about having a defence. It is about how culture across borders is scaled. Used strategically rather than bolted-on, employment law can enable agility through flexible working arrangements, fair performance frameworks, and inclusive global practices.
In this moment of transformation, the challenge and opportunity are clear – shape frameworks now, or be shaped by the consequences later.
A version of this article was also published in the March edition of the HRDirector.
