Employment law changes will give employees the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one, removing the two-year qualifying period.

The two-year qualifying service requirement for making a claim for unfair dismissal* will be removed, and employees will have the right not to be unfairly dismissed from day 1. However, employers will still be able to dismiss fairly during an “initial period of employment”, i.e. a probationary period (likely to be limited to nine months in length, although this is subject to consultation), by following a shorter, light-touch process (to be confirmed).

This will likely include a meeting with the employee to explain the concerns and offer them the right to be accompanied, prior to dismissal. Employers will only be able to fairly dismiss in this manner, where the reason for dismissal is conduct, performance, a statutory restriction, or SOSR (where the reason relates to the employee, not to change their terms and conditions) – but not redundancy.

*Any dismissal linked to an automatically unfair reason does not require two years of continuous service to make a claim.