Your managers might be your biggest unfair dismissal risk

From 1 January 2027, employees can claim unfair dismissal after just six months of service.

Down from two years.

The risk profile of every hire your organisation makes changes fundamentally and much sooner than before.

What actually changes

Anyone you hire from July 2026 onwards will reach six months' service by 1 January 2027 and gain protection on that date.

The clock is already running.

Alongside this, the statutory cap on compensatory awards is being removed.

Currently set at the lower of £118,223 or 52 weeks' gross pay, that ceiling disappears from January 2027.

For larger organisations with senior or highly paid employees, the cost of getting an early-stage dismissal wrong increases significantly.

A fair reason and a fair process are still required. You just need to be able to demonstrate both far earlier than you did before.

Where the risk is

You can have the strongest policies in the business. If your managers are not applying them, those policies will not protect you.

Most unfair dismissal claims stem from a manager making a quick call, having an undocumented conversation or leaving a concern unresolved for too long.

With a six-month qualifying period, there is far less time for those habits to catch up with you before a claim becomes possible.

What your managers need to understand

For a dismissal within the first six months to be defensible, managers need to be able to show:

• That clear expectations were set from the start, ideally in writing

• That performance or conduct concerns were raised early and directly, with a record

• That support was offered before any decision was made

• That any decision to end employment followed a fair process, even in the early months

Even in the early months, an informal conversation alone will not hold up. A process is still required and it needs to be documented.

Probation periods need a rethink too

If your standard probationary period is six months, it needs revisiting.

To retain any practical value, probation now needs to be shorter than six months, so you can complete your assessment and act on it before unfair dismissal protection kicks in.

Waiting until month five to raise concerns leaves very little room. If an employee has been off sick during that period, or concerns were handled informally without documentation, the position becomes harder still.

The training gap we see in most HR teams

HRDs in larger organisations are often managing this from a distance.

You set the framework, you brief the HRBPs, but day-to-day application sits with line managers, many of whom have never had to think about dismissal risk in the first six months of employment before.

Delivering training at the scale this change requires is a real ask when your team is already stretched.

That is a resourcing reality and exactly the kind of gap where external support makes commercial sense.

What good manager training covers

Training needs to be practical and scenario-based, not a policy read-through. Managers need to understand:

• What a fair reason for dismissal looks like in the early months and what falls short

• How to document concerns in a way that is proportionate and usable if challenged

• When to involve HR and when a situation has moved beyond an informal conversation

• How to handle capability and conduct concerns without ignoring them or overreacting

Managers just need enough knowledge to handle the early stages correctly and know when to escalate.

How we can help

If you know this training needs to happen but your team does not have the capacity to design and deliver it, that is a straightforward project for an independent HR consultant.

We can review your onboarding and early-stage performance management practices, identify where the risk sits and deliver targeted manager training built around your organisation's specific context.

January 2027 is closer than it looks.

Get in touch and we can talk through what that looks like for your organisation. Email:info@progressivehrs.co.uk Web Site. www.progressivehrs.co.uk