One letter a year: UK tech employers’ Employment Rights Act test

On 25 September the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade published its response to the Make Work Pay consultation on a quiet clause of the Employment Rights Act 2025: a duty on every employer to give every worker a written statement of their right to join a trade union. The response says the duty is “intended to come into force in January 2027”. The department’s own implementation roadmap had it down for October 2026.

The shape is now fixed, even if the regulations are not. The government will write the statement and employers may not change it, beyond adding workplace details such as which recognized unions cover which staff groups or sites. New starters get it with their written particulars of employment. Existing workers get it every year by 5 April, either directly or through an intranet posting backed by a written annual reminder. If a recognized union or an access agreement changes, the statement is reissued within a month. GOV.UK lists Kate Dearden, minister of state for the future of work since 21 July, alongside Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, as the ministers on the response. The department was renamed from the Department for Business and Trade in July.

For most UK technology employers this is unfamiliar ground. The government’s trade union statistics, published in May, put union density among employees in information and communication at 5.9% in 2025, down from 25.5% in 1995, against 22.4% across all employees and 12.1% in the private sector. The department’s impact assessment cites survey evidence that most workplaces have no union presence or recognized union, and expects any rise in membership to come mainly at employers that are not unionized.

That is why the sector’s people leaders should read it the right way round. The duty is not a union question. It is a clean test of whether a technology employer’s people processes can absorb the Employment Rights Act at all: a fixed piece of wording, delivered on a fixed date, to every worker, every year, with a paper trail. Employers that struggle with that will struggle with what follows.

Written for firms with an intranet

The response shows who turned up. Of 307 responses, 143 came from employers, 25 from trade unions and nine from human resources (HR) consultants or professionals. Large employers made up 36% of respondents; small businesses 9% and micro businesses 4%. The response records annual delivery being described as “consistent with existing HR cycles such as appraisals, pay reviews, P60s or policy updates”. That is a description of a company with an HR function. A 40-person technology firm has a payroll run and an appraisal round that may or may not happen on time.

Some respondents called for exemptions or lighter obligations for small employers, and the response notes the request. The impact assessment answers it: “The government does not consider an exemption for small, micro or medium businesses as appropriate or proportionate.” Around 96% of British employers are small or micro, it says, and about 1.46 million employers in Great Britain fall within scope.

Cheap on paper, awkward in practice

The department’s numbers make the duty look cheap. Familiarization is costed at £8.3m across all employers, preparing the statement at £8.4m, the first annual distribution at £10.6m and each later year at £7.8m – under £50 a year for most employers, the impact assessment says. The money is trivial. The process is what will catch people out.

Enforcement runs through the Employment Act 2002 rather than a new regime. The impact assessment sets out how that bites: a worker who brings another claim while the employer is still in breach may be eligible for an award, or an increase to an award, of between two and four weeks’ pay. The same January 2027 window, on the department’s updated timeline, brings the qualifying period for unfair dismissal down to six months and new fire-and-rehire protections. A missed statement becomes a top-up on claims that more workers will be able to bring. Unions’ strengthened right of access arrives on 30 October 2026, before the statement does, so the first union request to visit a technology employer may come before it has told its staff a union is an option.

Build the routine before the wording lands

The government says the statement will be neutral: “The intention of the duty is to ensure workers are aware of their rights, rather than to promote trade union membership.” It also says employers “will not be prevented from sharing additional information through separate channels if they wish”. Nothing in that needs a union policy. It needs three routines.

First, onboarding. The statement travels with the written particulars, so the particulars pack has to exist on day one and someone has to own it. Second, an annual statement date. The 5 April deadline sits at the end of the tax year; a firm that issues P60s or runs its pay review in April can attach the statement or the reminder to that run and log it. Firms taking the intranet route must keep the statement available all year and send the reminder in writing, and should keep a record of both. Third, an acquisitions trigger. An acquisition can change the recognized unions or access agreements an employer has to list, which on the response’s terms means reissuing the statement within a month and spelling out which grades, sites or staff groups the union covers. That belongs on the integration checklist beside the payroll migration.

None of this can be drafted yet, because the wording is the government’s and the regulations have not been laid. The slot in the process can be built now. A sector that sells other businesses the systems that keep them on schedule should manage one letter a year to its own people – and the employers that cannot will learn in January what the rest of the Act has in store.