Protection from unfair dismissal will be available from day one on the job for all employees. Employers will be able to fairly dismiss employees during an "initial period of employment" providing a straightforward procedure is followed (although note, this will not apply to redundancy dismissals). The duration of the initial period of employment is to be specifically consulted on but the Government has indicated its preference for it to be nine months. Written reasons for any dismissal will need to be provided.

In addition to unfair dismissal, paternity, and parental leave will be available from day one, as well as a new entitlement to one week's bereavement leave.

An employer’s decision to refuse a flexible working request for one of the eight prescribed statutory reasons must be “reasonable” and the employer must also provide an explanation as to why it is reasonable. Contrary to what has been reported in the press, employees would not have a “default right” to work flexibly but we do anticipate the numbers of flexible working requests (and associated disputes) to increase in the future.

It will be (in almost all cases) automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for refusing to agree to a variation in their contractual terms, if the intention of the employer is to then re-engage them on the varied terms, or employ someone else to replace them on the varied terms.

In effect, this brings an end to the so-called practice of “Fire and Rehire / Replace”. However, such dismissals may be permitted where, following extensive consultation, the reason for the variation is to rescue the business from serious financial difficulties.

Workers will have a right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work and a right to receive reasonable notice of any changes in shifts, with proportionate compensation for any shifts cancelled or curtailed at short notice.

The existing waiting period (i.e. that sick pay is not payable until the fourth day of absence) and the minimum earnings threshold (currently £123 per week) for statutory sick pay will be removed, making statutory sick pay available to all workers from day one.

A new enforcement agency, the Fair Work Agency, will have the power to enforce workplace rights. The Government press release highlights holiday pay as an example. It is possible that there will be a crackdown on businesses who regularly pay commission, overtime and other payments intrinsically linked to employment duties, but do not factor these payments into statutory holiday pay.

A number of notable manifesto pledges have been postponed until later in Parliament and the Government has published a “Next Steps” document outlining potential future reforms. Interestingly, the Government has postponed plans to create a single status of “worker”, expand the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill to make it mandatory for large employers to report their ethnicity and disability pay gap, and give employees a formal “right to switch off” (although the latter is likely to be covered under a statutory Code of Practice rather than through legislation).