HR Guidance for Managers: Handling the Day-to-Day
Practical guidance on the everyday people management situations that employers face most often, from performance conversations to flexible working requests.
Built for Employers & Their Teams
CIPD Chartered
ERA 2025 Updated
Bolton, Manchester, North WestMost HR problems start small. A performance conversation that was never had, a contract clause nobody checked, a flexible working request handled on instinct instead of process. This guide covers the everyday situations that keep employers up at night, with the law, the procedure and the practical steps.
What should a manager do first when an HR problem comes up?
Talk to the person. That sounds too simple to be advice, but the evidence says otherwise.
Acas research puts the cost of conflict to UK employers at £28.5 billion a year, more than £1,000 for each employee. The same research found that close to 10 million people experience conflict at work each year, just under 900,000 of them took time off because of it, nearly half a million resigned and over 300,000 were dismissed. Crucially for a manager deciding what to do on a Monday morning, Acas found that where conflict resulted in formal procedures, the costs were more than three times those of resolving it informally.
This is not a rare problem. Acas surveyed 4,558 people in August and September 2025 and found that 44% of working-age adults in Great Britain had experienced conflict at work in the previous 12 months.
Formal process is expensive too. Acas estimates that UK employers spend £2.36 billion a year managing disciplinary and grievance procedures, across an estimated 1.7 million formal disciplinary cases.
The five things to do before anything becomes formal
- 1.Have the conversation within a week. Problems that get named early get solved. Problems that get left become grievances.
- 2.Ask before you tell. You are often missing a health issue, a caring responsibility or a problem with another manager.
- 3.Write a short note of what was said and what you agreed. Two or three lines, emailed to the person the same day. This is your evidence later, and it is also how people remember what they committed to.
- 4.Set a date to review it. A fortnight or a month. Put it in the diary.
- 5.Only move to a formal process when informal has genuinely been tried and has not worked, or when the allegation is serious enough that informal handling would itself be unreasonable.
When to use mediation
Acas describes workplace mediation as less formal, flexible, voluntary and confidential, and usually not legally binding. It is used for relationship breakdowns, communication problems, personality clashes and bullying or harassment concerns. Acas notes it is generally not used for disputes about pay, dismissal or conduct.
Mediation works because both people have to agree to be there. If one of them is being made to attend, you do not have mediation, you have a meeting.
How do I manage someone whose performance is not good enough?
Separate two things first: can't and won't. Capability is a skills, health or role-fit problem. Conduct is a choices problem. They are handled differently and mixing them up is the most common expensive mistake we see.
Acas guidance is that employers should talk to employees informally first, because this can resolve the problem more quickly and stop it escalating into a formal procedure.
What a performance improvement plan must contain
Acas says a plan should set out specific objectives for the employee, a reasonable timeline to meet them, and any further support or training they need, and that the employer must talk the plan through with the employee to make sure they understand it, including what happens if the targets are not met.
In practice, a plan that will stand up needs all six of these:
- 1.What specifically is below standard, with examples and dates, not adjectives.
- 2.What "good" looks like, in measurable terms the person can check themselves against.
- 3.A realistic period to get there. Four weeks for a simple task error. Three months for a complex role.
- 4.The support you are providing, named: training, a buddy, reduced workload, equipment, a changed shift pattern.
- 5.Review dates, in the diary before the plan starts.
- 6.What happens if it does not improve, stated plainly, so nobody is surprised later.
Before you start: three checks
- ●Is there a health issue? If the person has a disability within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010, you have a duty to make reasonable adjustments, and a performance process that ignores that duty is very hard to defend.
- ●Is the standard actually written down anywhere? If the target has never been communicated, you are not managing performance, you are inventing it.
- ●Is the problem the role, not the person? Sometimes the honest answer is that the job changed and nobody said so.
The formal capability process
If informal steps and a plan have not worked, the formal route follows the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, which requires the employer to carry out any necessary investigation to establish the facts, notify the employee in writing with sufficient information about the alleged poor performance, hold a meeting without unreasonable delay, and allow an appeal. The employee has a statutory right to be accompanied by a fellow worker, a trade union representative, or an official employed by a trade union.
Get this wrong and it costs money directly. Under section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, a tribunal may increase an award by up to 25% where an employer has unreasonably failed to comply with the Code, and may reduce an award by up to 25% where the employee has.
Worth knowing: Acas opened a consultation on a revised Code of Practice on 30 July 2026, closing 23 September 2026. The Code was last fully revised in 2009. If your disciplinary and capability policy quotes the 2009 Code, put a note in the diary to review it.
How do I handle a dispute between two employees?
Disputes between colleagues are the single most-searched HR problem we see, and the one managers most often make worse by waiting.
A workable sequence
- 1.Speak to each person separately, within days. Not together first. You need to understand each account before you put them in a room.
- 2.Decide what kind of problem this is. A misunderstanding, a clash of working styles, a conduct allegation, or a protected-characteristic issue such as harassment. The last two cannot be handled informally as if they were the first two.
- 3.If it is a relationship problem, offer mediation. Voluntary and confidential, per the Acas guidance on mediation. Anything discussed cannot be used in a future procedure if no agreement is reached.
- 4.If someone raises a formal grievance, follow the grievance procedure. Acas sets out six steps: understanding the options, raising a grievance, responding to it, the grievance meeting, deciding the outcome, and what happens after. The employee can bring a relevant person to the grievance meeting and can appeal the outcome.
- 5.Give the outcome in writing, with reasons. People accept decisions they understand far more often than decisions they do not.
- 6.Check back after a month. Most disputes that "resolve" and then reappear were never actually resolved, they were just paused.
The one thing not to do
Do not tell two people to "sort it out between themselves" and leave it there. That is the step that turns a conversation into a grievance, and the grievance into a claim. Acas's own figures on the 3x cost of formal over informal resolution are the argument for intervening early, not for avoiding the subject.
Where tribunal claims currently stand
If you are weighing up whether to resolve something or fight it, the system itself is worth understanding. In the quarter April to June 2026, the employment tribunal received 14,000 single claim receipts and ended the quarter with 70,000 open single claim cases and 537,000 open claims in total, counting single and multiple claims together. Nobody's dispute gets resolved quickly in that queue. Settling early, or preventing the dispute, is almost always cheaper than being right slowly.
How do I change an employee's contract?
You need agreement. That is the starting point and it is not negotiable.
Acas puts it plainly: you must both agree to the changes, unless there is a clause in the contract that allows you to make a change without agreement. Where terms were agreed with a recognised trade union, you must consult that union.
What the contract has to say in the first place
Every employee and worker must get a written statement of employment particulars. Under GOV.UK guidance, the principal statement must be given on the first day and must include the employer's name, the person's name and job title or description of work, the start date, how much and how often they will be paid, hours and days of work and whether and how they may vary, holiday entitlement, where they will be working (and if they work in different places, where those are and the employer's address), how long the job is expected to last, the length and conditions of any probation period, any other benefits, and obligatory training. The wider written statement, covering pensions, collective agreements, non-compulsory training and disciplinary and grievance procedures, must follow within 2 months.
The "where they will be working" line matters more than most employers realise. It is the clause that decides whether a move down the road is a variation, a mobility-clause exercise or a redundancy.
A process that works
- 1.Explain why, with the business reason and the numbers behind it.
- 2.Consult genuinely, early enough that the answer is not already fixed.
- 3.Ask for alternatives and consider them properly. Staff frequently propose something cheaper than what you were planning.
- 4.Get written agreement from each affected person.
- 5.Confirm the change in writing and update the written statement.
- 6.Consider a trial period for changes to hours or working patterns. It converts an argument into an experiment.
If agreement cannot be reached
Dismissal and re-engagement, sometimes called fire and rehire, is a last resort and is now heavily regulated. The statutory Code of Practice on Dismissal and Re-engagement came into force on 18 July 2024. It requires thorough and open information-sharing and consultation, genuine consideration of reasonable alternative proposals, and says the employer should contact Acas for advice before raising the prospect of dismissal and re-engagement. A tribunal can increase any award it makes by up to 25% where the employer has unreasonably failed to comply with that Code.
This is changing. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, from 1 January 2027 it becomes automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for refusing a change to certain core terms, unless a narrow exemption for severe financial difficulties applies. The Department for Business and Trade factsheet lists those core terms as reductions to pay, changes to total hours, reductions to leave entitlement, changes to pensions and specified shift pattern changes. It also becomes automatically unfair to dismiss employees in order to replace them with non-employees, such as agency workers, doing substantially the same work. For non-core changes such as location or job role, enhanced protections require meaningful consultation.
If you have contract changes you have been putting off, the window to do them by agreement is now, not in 2027.
What family leave do my employees get, and what do I have to pay?
Two things changed on 6 April 2026 that catch employers out: paternity leave and unpaid parental leave both became day-one rights, per Acas guidance on the Employment Rights Act 2025. Statutory sick pay also became payable from the first day of illness rather than the fourth, and the earnings threshold was removed.
The 2026/27 rates
The GOV.UK rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027 set these figures:
| Payment | Rate |
|---|---|
| Statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay | 90% of average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks (maternity/adoption), then £194.32 or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower |
| Statutory parental bereavement and neonatal care pay | £194.32 or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower |
| Statutory sick pay | £123.25 or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower |
| Lower earnings limit | £129 per week (£559 a month, £6,708 a year) |
Maternity
Statutory maternity leave is 52 weeks: 26 weeks' ordinary maternity leave and 26 weeks' additional maternity leave. An employee must take 2 weeks' leave after the birth, or 4 weeks if she works in a factory. The earliest leave can start is 11 weeks before the expected week of childbirth. If she wants to change her return date, she must give at least 8 weeks' notice.
Statutory maternity pay runs for up to 39 weeks: 90% of average weekly earnings before tax for the first 6 weeks, then £194.32 or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, for the next 33 weeks.
Paternity
Two weeks' leave. GOV.UK confirms you are eligible for paternity leave from the first day of employment. Pay is different from leave: for statutory paternity pay the employee must have been continuously employed for at least 26 weeks up to the end of the qualifying week (the 15th week before the baby is due), must still be employed up to the date of birth, and must earn an average of at least £129 a week before tax.
Unpaid parental leave
18 weeks for each child, up to the child's 18th birthday, capped at 4 weeks per child per year unless you agree otherwise, and normally taken in whole weeks. Since 6 April 2026 this is a day-one right.
Shared parental leave
Up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay, shared between the parents in the first year after the birth or placement. It only becomes available if the mother or adopter takes less than the full 52 weeks.
Neonatal care leave
A right that many employers have still not written into their policies. Per Acas, parents can take one week of leave for each full week the baby spends in neonatal care, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. The qualifying conditions are that the baby is admitted to neonatal care within 28 days of birth and has been in neonatal care for at least 7 full and consecutive days. Leave is a day-one right. Pay requires 26 weeks of continuous service.
Bereavement
Employees have a right to reasonable, unpaid statutory time off for dependants if a dependant dies, and eligible parents have a right to 2 weeks off if their child dies under the age of 18.
What to actually do
- ●Check your family leave policy names the 2026/27 rates, not last year's.
- ●Check your paternity and parental leave policies no longer contain a service qualification for leave.
- ●Add neonatal care leave if it is not there.
- ●Train line managers that the answer to "I think my partner's having a baby" is never improvised.
How much holiday does someone get, and how do I work it out for irregular hours?
Almost all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year, which for someone working five days a week is 28 days. GOV.UK confirms the statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days, so someone working six days a week is still only entitled to 28. Bank holidays do not have to be given as paid leave, but an employer can choose to count them as part of the 5.6 weeks.
Acas notes that holiday builds up from the first day of employment, including during a probation period, sick leave and statutory leave, and that part-day entitlements must be rounded up to the nearest half day in the first year.
Irregular hours and part-year workers
This is where most payroll errors live. For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular hours workers and part-year workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of actual hours worked in a pay period, per the GOV.UK holiday pay and entitlement reforms guidance. The 12.07% figure comes from 5.6 weeks of leave divided by the 46.4 working weeks in a year (52 minus 5.6).
The definitions matter:
- ●An irregular hours worker is one whose paid hours in each pay period are, under the terms of their contract, "wholly or mostly variable".
- ●A part-year worker is one required to work only part of the year, with periods of at least a week in that year that they are not required to work and are not paid for.
Term-time-only staff and casual staff usually fall into one of these two categories. Full-time staff on fixed hours never do.
Rolled-up holiday pay
Rolled-up holiday pay is lawful only for irregular hours and part-year workers, and is calculated at 12.07% of the worker's total pay, per the same GOV.UK guidance. If you are rolling up holiday pay for anyone else, stop.
Accrual during absence
Holiday keeps building during maternity and other family-related leave and during sick leave. Where the worker is an irregular hours or part-year worker, GOV.UK guidance says accrued hours are calculated using average weekly hours from a 52-week lookback period.
GOV.UK provides a holiday entitlement calculator which covers a full leave year, a part year, and accrual for irregular hours workers over a pay period. Use it, and keep the printout on file.
How do I make one person redundant fairly?
Individual redundancy is where small employers most often trip. The process is not complicated but it has to be a real process.
Is it genuinely a redundancy?
Section 139 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 defines redundancy as a dismissal wholly or mainly attributable to the employer ceasing or intending to cease to carry on the business, or to carry it on in the place where the employee was employed, or to the requirements of the business for employees to carry out work of a particular kind, or work of a particular kind in that place, having ceased or diminished or being expected to.
If what you actually want is to replace this person with someone better, that is not a redundancy and calling it one will not help you.
The steps
- 1.Write the business case first. What is the role, why has the need for it reduced, what are the numbers?
- 2.Define the pool. Even for one dismissal, you must be able to explain why the pool is that person and not a wider group of people doing similar work.
- 3.Set objective selection criteria and apply them with evidence.
- 4.Consult individually. At least two meetings, usually three: an "at risk" meeting, a meeting on selection and alternatives, and an outcome meeting.
- 5.Search for suitable alternative employment across the business, and offer it where it exists.
- 6.Give the decision in writing, with the right of appeal.
- 7.Pay notice and redundancy pay, and confirm the leaving date.
Suitable alternative employment and the trial period
Under section 138 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, where an employee is re-engaged under a renewed or new contract taking effect immediately or within four weeks, they are not treated as dismissed. Where the terms differ, there is a statutory trial period of four weeks beginning with the date the employee starts work under the new contract, or a longer agreed period for retraining. If the employee ends the new contract within the trial period, they are treated as dismissed on the date the old contract ended, for the original reason.
Notice
Section 86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 sets statutory minimum notice: not less than one week where continuous employment is less than two years; one week for each year where it is two years or more but less than twelve; and twelve weeks where it is twelve years or more. Contractual notice, if longer, applies instead.
Redundancy pay
GOV.UK sets out statutory redundancy pay for employees with at least 2 years' continuous service:
- ●half a week's pay for each full year of employment up to their 22nd birthday
- ●a week's pay for each full year after their 22nd birthday
- ●1.5 weeks' pay for each full year after their 41st birthday
Service is capped at 20 years. A week's pay is capped at £751 and the maximum statutory redundancy payment is £22,530.
That £751 cap rose from £719 on 6 April 2026 under the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026. The same Order raised the cap on the compensatory award for unfair dismissal from £118,223 to £123,543, and the daily guarantee payment from £39 to £41.
Time off to look for work
Under section 52 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, an employee given notice of dismissal by reason of redundancy is entitled to reasonable time off during working hours before the end of their notice to look for new employment or arrange training, provided they will have two or more years' continuous employment by the time the notice expires.
If it is 20 or more
If you are proposing 20 or more redundancies at one establishment within any 90-day period, you are into collective consultation and a different set of duties, including a minimum consultation period and notification to government. That is covered on our business change page.
Context
Redundancy is not unusually common right now, but it is not rare either. ONS put the UK redundancy rate at 3.6 per thousand employees in May 2026, in a release dated 18 August 2026. CIPD's Spring 2026 Labour Market Outlook, based on 2,049 senior HR professionals and decision-makers surveyed between 23 March and 23 April 2026, found 22% of employers planning to make redundancies in the three months to July 2026, with the net employment balance at a near-record low of +10.
Can an employee ask to change their working pattern, and can I say no?
Yes to both, with conditions.
Flexible working is a day-one right. The Acas Code of Practice on requests for flexible working, which took effect on 6 April 2024, confirms every employee has a statutory right to request flexible working from the first day of employment.
The rules a manager needs:
- ●An employee may make two statutory requests within any 12-month period.
- ●All requests, including any appeal, must be decided and communicated within two months of the employer first receiving the request.
- ●You must not reject a request without first consulting the employee, unless you are agreeing to it in full.
- ●You can only refuse for one or more of eight statutory business reasons: burden of additional costs; inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff; inability to recruit additional staff; detrimental impact on quality; detrimental impact on performance; detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand; insufficient work available for the periods the employee proposes to work; or planned structural changes to the employer's business.
Coming: Acas confirms that under the Employment Rights Act 2025, in 2027 employers will have to state the business reason when rejecting a request and explain why they believe their refusal is reasonable. The exact date is not yet set.
What is changing in employment law, and when?
This is the part to diarise. All dates below come from Acas's Employment Rights Act 2025 page unless otherwise linked.
Already in force, 6 April 2026
- ●Statutory sick pay is paid from the first day of illness instead of the fourth, and the earnings threshold has been removed.
- ●Paternity leave and ordinary parental leave became day-one rights.
- ●The maximum protective award for failure to consult in a collective redundancy doubled from 90 to 180 days' pay.
- ●The week's pay cap rose to £751 and the unfair dismissal compensatory award cap to £123,543.
1 October 2026
- ●Employment tribunal time limits for most claims increase from 3 months minus 1 day to 6 months minus 1 day, for claims where the time limit starts on or after that date. Acas guidance on tribunal time limits confirms this and notes that a few claims, including statutory redundancy pay and equal pay, already carry a six-month limit.
1 January 2027
- ●Protection from unfair dismissal becomes a right after 6 months in a job instead of two years, and the cap on unfair dismissal compensation is removed.
- ●Dismissal and rehire becomes automatically unfair in most cases.
2027, dates not yet confirmed
- ●Employers must state the business reason for rejecting a flexible working request and explain why the refusal is reasonable.
- ●Zero-hours workers gain rights to guaranteed hours, shift cancellation compensation and reasonable notice of shifts.
Why the October 2026 change matters more than it sounds
Doubling the tribunal time limit doubles the period in which a leaver can decide to bring a claim. Paperwork you would previously have needed to keep for three months after a dismissal you will now need for six. Two practical consequences: keep investigation notes and decision letters for longer, and take settlement conversations more seriously at the point of exit rather than assuming the window will simply close.
Employers are already feeling the change. CIPD's Winter 2025/26 Labour Market Outlook, surveying 2,082 senior HR professionals and decision-makers between 18 December 2025 and 17 January 2026, found 74% expected their employment costs to increase and 55% expected workplace conflict to increase, with a net employment balance of +7 and a median basic pay award of 3%.
Our view is that the employers who will come out of this well are the ones who use the next year to tidy up contracts, train managers in having ordinary conversations early, and stop treating process as something that happens after a relationship has already broken down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Get this handled
DaisyHR supports employers in Bolton, Greater Manchester and across the North West on every situation covered on this page: the performance conversation that is not working, the contract clause nobody checked, the restructure that needs to be fair, or the flexible working request that just arrived.
Related: business change and restructuring | TUPE transfers
Compiled by Samantha Boyle MCIPD — Fractional HR Director, Bolton & North West. CIPD Chartered (Level 7). · Last reviewed: 15 September 2026