The 6th of April 2026 came and went. The Employment Rights Act 2025 brought in some of the most significant changes to UK parental leave in a generation – and while many HR teams rushed to update their policies before the deadline, a month on it’s clear that plenty of deskless employers are still scrambling to close the gaps.
If your workforce is largely field-based – retail, logistics, hospitality, construction, facilities management – this article cuts to what changed, what your new record-keeping obligation actually means in practice, and what to do right now to get compliant before the Fair Work Agency comes knocking.
What changed?
The ERA 2025 removed qualifying service requirements for two types of leave:
- Paternity leave: previously required 26 weeks of service. From 6 April 2026, it’s a day-one right.
- Unpaid parental leave: previously required 1 year of service. Now also a day-one right, up to 18 weeks per child until the child turns 18.
Employees can also now take paternity leave after a period of shared parental leave — removing a longstanding restriction. And a brand-new entitlement was introduced: bereaved partner’s paternity leave, giving the surviving partner of someone who dies in connection with childbirth up to 52 weeks of unpaid leave, also from day one.
What many HR teams have overlooked in the rush: the ERA 2025 simultaneously introduced a mandatory obligation to keep records of annual leave, holiday pay, and parental leave absences for a minimum of six years. Failure to comply is a criminal offence, potentially carrying an unlimited fine, and it’s now the Fair Work Agency — which became operational on 7 April 2026 — that will oversee enforcement.
Why May is exactly the right moment to act
Enough time has now passed for the “we’ll sort it after the deadline” approach to become genuinely risky. Here’s what’s happening on the ground right now:
- Employees hired this week already have day-one rights to paternity and parental leave. If you don’t have an approval and recording workflow in place, you can’t document compliance.
- The Fair Work Agency is actively establishing its enforcement framework. Employers with poor record-keeping are the easiest targets.
- HR teams relying on spreadsheets, email chains, or paper forms to manage absences for frontline workers have a growing backlog of requests with no audit trail attached.
If you’re reading this in May and haven’t yet updated your systems, the window to fix this before a request becomes a dispute — or an inspection becomes a fine — is closing.
The deskless worker problem
The ERA 2025’s record-keeping requirements don’t specify a format. But for employers with distributed workforces, the practical challenge is significant: how do you create a reliable, six-year-auditable record of leave requests and approvals when most of your employees don’t have access to a computer?
In practice, frontline workers currently request time off by texting their manager, calling the supervisor, or filling in a paper form. None of these methods produce records that would survive a six-year retention requirement or an employment tribunal.
What the records need to capture, at minimum:
- The type of leave (paternity, unpaid parental, bereaved partner’s paternity, annual leave, etc.)
- The dates and duration
- Evidence that the request was received and how it was processed (approved, declined, postponed)
- Who approved it and when
How to digitise absence records: the practical steps
1. Put the request process in the employees’ pockets
A mobile-first HR app lets a warehouse operative, delivery driver, or floor worker submit a leave request in under a minute — without needing a computer or a supervisor present. The request is timestamped, categorised, and saved automatically.
2. Build approval workflows with a clear audit trail
The manager receives a push notification, reviews the request, and approves or declines with a tap. The decision is logged with the name of the approver, and — if declined — the reason. That chain of events is what you’d present in an audit or tribunal.
3. Categorise leave types correctly
Your system needs to distinguish clearly between paternity leave, unpaid parental leave, bereaved partner’s paternity leave, and ordinary annual leave. They carry different eligibility rules, different notification requirements, and will need to be reported separately if the Fair Work Agency requests records.
4. Communicate the new rights to employees proactively
The rights apply whether or not employees know about them. Send a clear internal communication explaining that paternity leave and unpaid parental leave are now day-one rights, how to request them, and who approves them. Informed employees mean fewer disputes.
HR compliance checklist (May 2026)
- Contracts and HR policies updated to remove qualifying service requirements for paternity and parental leave?
- Employees able to submit leave requests from a mobile device, without a computer?
- All leave approvals logged with name, timestamp, and outcome?
- Data retention set to 6 years in your HR platform?
- Employee privacy notice updated to reflect the new six-year retention obligation?
- Line managers trained on day-one rights and the 28-day notice rule for eligible new starters?
- Bereaved partner’s paternity leave policy in place, with manager guidance?
How Humand helps deskless employers stay compliant
Humand’s Time Off & Leave module is built for distributed workforces where the majority of employees work without a desk or corporate device. Employees request leave from the mobile app in seconds; managers approve with a tap; all records are centralised, timestamped, and retained in line with your configured policy.
Whether you’re catching up on ERA 2025 compliance or building a scalable leave management process from scratch, find out how Humand makes it straightforward for frontline-heavy employers to stay on the right side of the Fair Work Agency.
