The Employment Rights Act 2025 – will it improve the lives of women in the workplace?

The many individual measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025 apply to all workers, but several directly or indirectly enhance support for women in the workplace. Here, Caroline Green shares insights from interviews with 15 women conducted for her book, The Career Confidence Toolkit for Women, alongside perspectives from HR professionals, to explore how women are currently faring at work and how the Act may help drive meaningful improvement.

The relevant measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025 are timely, not just for women themselves but for the whole of society. As employment solicitor Charlotte Yallop tells me, the Act “arrives at a moment when the conversation about women’s economic participation is finally catching up with the reality of women’s working lives”.

Increased pregnancy and maternity protections and rights

Measures within the Act will make it unlawful to dismiss a woman while she is pregnant, on maternity leave, or during a defined return-to-work period, except in specific circumstances. This additional protection will also apply to those returning from adoption or shared parental leave, and a day-one paternity and ordinary parental leave right will be introduced.

For Nicola Lyons, a strategic HR leader, these developments reflect the realities of modern society. “I strongly support these changes, I believe we still have a lot of progress to make in these areas which sadly leaves women vulnerable in the workplace and therefore in general. This then has a negative impact on the socio-economy.”

For HR, this reinforces the need to train managers not only in the new Employment Rights Act requirements, but also in the basics of good practice and providing meaningful support for pregnant workers and those taking parental leave.

The requirement to publish gender pay gap and menopause action plans

While there have been some moves towards these areas previously, the Act marks a move towards stronger employer accountability in relation to closing the gender pay gap and providing menopause support. This is welcomed by many. “Both topics are burning issues for females and need to be addressed,” says Nicola. Charlotte adds: “The Government’s signal that gender pay gap and menopause action plans will move from voluntary to mandatory regimes marks a major shift in employer accountability. It’s no longer enough to publish data, organisations will be required to demonstrate meaningful action.”

So what might that meaningful action look like? As with much of the Employment Rights Act, there are still a lot of unknowns, with consultations planned and regulations needing to be published. However, in Charlotte’s view, “Mandatory menopause action plans could be transformative. They create a formal expectation that employers understand and accommodate menopausal health, something that impacts millions of women, yet has historically been treated as an individual issue rather than a workplace one.”

For Abby, an HR professional, plans are not enough: “Menopause support for women needs to be proactive and varied. Every woman will have different needs and it’s not enough to simply have a policy, it needs to be actionable.” 

Julie Grimes, who previously worked in recruitment and is now a menopause coach, agrees that taking action is important and highlights the complexity of the situation. “There are over 100 symptoms of menopause but 34 main ones. Companies can help in many ways, including bringing in an expert such as myself to implement awareness talks, provide practical tips and workshops at various levels to create confidence and start those open conversations to support staff. There is not only a moral case for this but a business one too.” Moreover, getting senior leaders and decision-makers, as well as men at any level, in the room will help create a greater understanding of the challenges women face during menopause and how organisations can support their talent.

In relation to gender pay reporting, Nicola supports the added action plan requirement but notes that it will involve “a necessary increase of work and will affect budget spend. It will take time to manage and process these changes.” HR teams can help themselves get ready for this important change, due to be introduced in 2027, by starting to plan for how they will approach it now, including budgeting for any tools they may need to help them gather, process and analyse data.

Flexible work reforms

Nicola highlights the benefits of flexible working for everyone, including “achieving a better working environment and reducing discrimination”, but better flexible working arrangements could particularly benefit women. Many studies have shown that these are among the best forms of support an organisation can provide women going through perimenopause and menopause. Flexibility in terms of both hours and location can be a simple yet hugely impactful support solution for women dealing with painful symptoms to battling fatigue. There are many other benefits associated with flexible working, including supporting women back into work after maternity leave and making life more manageable for anyone with any kind of caring responsibilities (which often fall at women’s feet). As Elizabeth Willetts, an award-winning flexible work recruiter, puts it, “If you’re not offering flexibility, you’re not a truly inclusive organisation.” 

The Employment Rights Act is designed to reinforce previous legislation supporting flexible working, placing a requirement on organisations to refuse flexible working requests only where reasonable and to state the grounds and reasons for any such refusal. Melanie Folkes-Mayers, an award-winning people and culture expert, comments, “With regards to flexible work, most businesses will be able to accommodate some flexible working, but those who cannot will need to be clear on why it’s not possible.” Tracey Salisbury, director of an HR consultancy, believes that for HR this could be just as much about supporting a wider culture change: “Flexible working changes will require better management of requests, ensuring open discussions and, for some companies, a change in culture to embrace the changing nature of work and facilitate the benefits of flexible working.”

Harassment

Harassment can happen to anyone in the workplace, but many incidents affect women. Nicola welcomes the introduction of employer liability for third-party harassment, for example by customers or clients. This “makes complete sense,” she says. “The issue as with other topics will be the monitoring but I think this can be addressed through having a clear process and communication set-up and contractual terms with the third parties which also lay out the employer’s expectations.” Likewise she believes that employers being required to take “all” reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment is welcome: “It is everyone’s responsibility to stamp out this type of behaviour at work.” Time will tell as to what the addition of the word “all” to the existing legislation means in practice. In the meantime HR teams should be updating their policies and training staff on what is or is not appropriate in the workplace and progressing company culture.

Charlotte notes that this legislation hints at other culture changes. “The expected reinforcement of sexual harassment duties underpins a wider cultural shift: from reactive grievance handling to proactive prevention. For women, that’s likely to mean safer and more accountable workplaces.”

Get ready now

While we await the outcome of consultations to clarify the details of some of these measures, there is plenty that HR teams can begin doing now to provide extra support for women in the workplace. Many of the Employment Rights Act’s proposed changes may appear straightforward, a deeper challenge lies in bringing about the culture shift implicit in them.

For women, this isn’t just about navigating organisational culture; it reflects the need for broader systemic change across society. That’s why it’s crucial for HR to start driving cultural transformation early. Begin by reviewing your current policies and practices across all areas that may support or hinder women, and identify where timely improvements can be made now.