Sweep away your outdated HR

It’s called spring cleaning for a reason. Spring is a time of fresh starts and regeneration as longer hours of daylight, warmer weather and beautiful blossoms create positive energy and feel-good vibes. The Victorians coined the phrase in English, but humankind has been spring cleaning for millennia.

It’s a particularly good time to apply the principle to your HR, too. While we’d recommend reviewing policies and paperwork periodically anyway, spring works well because April is a common month for new employment law to be introduced. And this year, as we have been reporting for months, is a bumper year for change.

So here’s a general look at the areas you could focus your HR spring clean on, with some added focus on matters that require special attention in 2026.

Employment contracts

If you didn’t review your employment contracts on a yearly basis they would quickly go out of date and have you offering or denying rights that were not aligned with the law. This is one of the main reasons why Googling “employment contracts”, instead of having them professionally drafted for your company, is a bad idea. A search engine may give you a contract from ten years ago!

This year, check that they reflect the big changes made to statutory sick pay, and consider that in the next 12 months or so (although not this April) there will be major changes to zero-hour contracts and probation periods.

Pay

You need to review pay each year to ensure that it reflects the national living and minimum wages. But also, commercially, to ensure that your pay is in line with market expectation and/or your business goals, especially since inflation has been such an issue in recent years.

This April, the headline rate of minimum wage, known as the national living wage, rises to £12.71 per hour for those aged 21 and over. For 18–20-year-olds it is £10.85 per hour. The apprentice rate and rate for 16-17-year-olds is £8 per hour.

Policies

Your policies are where you’ll really need to roll your sleeves up with the spring cleaning, particularly in 2026.

For most companies, major amendments to sick pay are the biggest single change that is being introduced this April, with the lower earnings limit being removed and sick pay being payable from day one of absence. Family leave policies will also need to be reviewed with paternity leave and unpaid parental leave becoming a day one right and removal of a restriction preventing paternity leave being taken after shared parental leave.

Company handbook and communication 

By its definition, HR directly affects your staff. So when you review HR and make changes and updates, communicating this to your team is an essential part of the job of the HR spring clean.

We are big proponents of company handbooks which wrap up all your policies into one document. This can then be easily shared with staff and used as a point of reference. An email or other bulletin is a good additional way to communicate key changes.

How we can help

We’ve shared the main areas which you may like to include in your HR spring clean, but we can also help by doing it for you if you do not have the time, or just need an expert, thorough job done. 

Naturally, we can do this at any time, but because of all the legislative changes that are happening this year, check out our Employment Rights Act compliance audit which we are offering right now. To find out more, get in touch.