The records, policies, contracts, training and evidence a UK employer has to keep — in one place, current, and ready for the wave of Employment Rights Act changes landing through 2026 and 2027. Complys is the records and readiness layer; it is not a law firm and does not give legal advice.
Employment compliance is less about a single rule and more about a stack of obligations that every employer carries: written particulars and contracts; the right to work of everyone you engage; working-time and holiday records; statutory pay such as sick pay; policies and the training that makes them real; fair process around discipline and dismissal; and the records that prove you did all of it. Most of these are not hard individually — the difficulty is keeping them current, consistent and evidenced across a workforce, especially while the law itself is changing.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 is being rolled out in stages. Some measures are already in force in 2026 — day-one statutory sick pay, day-one family leave, a six-year holiday-record requirement, and a new enforcement body, the Fair Work Agency. Others land on 1 January 2027, including the drop in the unfair-dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months. More follows later in 2027. The practical upshot is a moving target: what you must evidence in early 2026 is not the same as in 2027. We track it on the 2026 and 2027 change guides.
Hold employment contracts, written particulars and your policies in one place, versioned and current.
Keep the employment records you must retain — including holiday records and right-to-work evidence — with the dates that matter.
Track the training that turns a policy into practice, per worker, with expiry reminders.
Employment compliance sits with each worker’s cards, qualifications and checks, not in a separate silo.
Renewals, reviews and expiries are surfaced and chased before they slip.
See where you stand across the workforce, rather than assembling evidence the week before you need it.
Every employee is entitled to a written statement of particulars, and your policies only protect you if they are current, consistent and actually issued. Complys holds contracts, written statements and policies against each worker and centrally, so you can see who is on which version, reissue when terms change, and evidence that a policy existed at a given date. When the law shifts — as it is doing repeatedly through 2026 and 2027 — the ability to update a policy and show who has the new version is the difference between a controlled change and a scramble.
A policy on paper is not a defence on its own. Since employer liability for third-party harassment widened in October 2026, for example, what matters is whether you took reasonable steps — which usually means a policy that has been briefed and trained, not just written. Complys links training and acknowledgements to the relevant policy per worker, with expiry and refresher reminders, so the evidence that your people understood the rules is captured rather than assumed.
Employment comes with an increasing set of record-keeping duties — holiday records now for six years, right to work for employment plus two years, pay and statutory-pay records, sickness, and discipline and dismissal records — each with its own retention period. Complys keeps them in the worker record with the correct dates and reminders, and manages disposal when a period ends. The detail of what to keep and for how long is on our employment records guide.
From 1 January 2027 the unfair-dismissal qualifying period falls from two years to six months, so many more employees will be able to bring a claim. That puts a premium on a fair, documented process around performance, conduct and dismissal. Complys keeps the supporting records — contracts, policies, training, performance and disciplinary documentation — organised and retained, so if a decision is challenged the evidence is there. It does not decide whether a dismissal is fair; that is your decision, with advice where needed. See the 2027 changes.
Employment compliance weighs most on organisations with larger, mixed or changing workforces — care and healthcare, construction and trades, hospitality, facilities and recruitment — where employees, workers and subcontractors sit side by side and the records multiply. For these businesses the value is not another HR system but a single, dependable evidence layer that spans everyone who does work for them, which is exactly what becomes essential as right to work and other duties widen across that whole population.
Complys keeps the evidence layer: contracts and policies, the records you must retain, training and competence, worker documents and their expiry, and a readiness view across your people. What it does notdo is give you legal advice, decide whether a dismissal is fair, calculate anyone’s entitlements, or guarantee that you comply with employment law — those depend on your decisions and, where needed, professional advice. The value is that when a question, an audit, a tribunal or the Fair Work Agency asks “can you show it?”, the records are current and to hand.
Employment compliance rarely stands alone. It overlaps with right to work, DBS where roles are eligible, worker compliance, training and contractor onboarding. Complys holds them together against each worker, so the same person’s contract, checks, training and records live in one place rather than five systems — which is what makes a widening set of obligations manageable.
The start and end of employment are where compliance is won or lost. At onboarding, Complys captures the contract, the right to work evidence, the policies acknowledged and the training assigned — all dated, all on the worker record — so a new starter is compliant from day one, which matters now so many rights attach immediately. At offboarding, it holds the leaver’s records for their required retention periods and flags secure disposal when each period ends, so you neither lose evidence you may need for a later claim nor keep personal data longer than you should.
When the law changes repeatedly, your policies change with it — and the question at a tribunal or an enquiry is which version applied, and who had seen it. Complys keeps versioned policies with a record of who acknowledged which version and when. That turns “we had a policy” into “here is the policy that applied on that date and the record that this employee accepted it” — a materially stronger position.
Beyond the individual record, managers need a view across everyone: which workers are missing a contract or a signed policy, whose training has lapsed, which right to work follow-ups are due. Complys surfaces that as a readiness view rather than something you assemble by hand before an audit — and it spans employees, workers and subcontractors, which is exactly the mixed population the widening 2026–2027 duties now reach.
Complys is a compliance layer, not a replacement for your HR system, payroll or applicant-tracking tool. Those systems run hiring and pay; Complys focuses on the part they tend to handle poorly — the evidence, the documents and the expiry dates behind each worker’s compliance. It sits alongside what you already use and, crucially, covers the people your core systems may not hold well, such as contractors and agency or platform-sourced workers, so your compliance record spans the whole workforce rather than just payroll employees.
Employment records are sensitive personal data, so access should be limited to the people who need it — HR, compliance and the relevant managers — rather than open to all. Holding these records in a controlled system, instead of shared drives and inboxes, is part of meeting your data-protection obligations as well as your employment ones. The two duties pull in the same direction: keep the right records, securely, for the right period, and dispose of them properly afterwards.
Employment compliance is not only about regulators. Clients, principal contractors and procurement teams increasingly ask you to demonstrate that your workforce is compliant — right to work done, training current, policies in place — as part of prequalification and tender questionnaires. When that evidence lives in one place and is already current, responding is quick and credible; when it is scattered, it is a scramble that can cost you the work. The same record that keeps you ready for the Fair Work Agency also helps you win and keep contracts, which is where compliance quietly becomes commercial.
You do not have to solve everything at once. Add your people, bring your contracts, policies and existing records in, and let Complys hold them with reminders for reviews and renewals. Expand into training, worker checks and documents as you go. You can start free, and grow the record as the 2026–2027 changes take effect.
No. Complys helps you organise and evidence your employment compliance — records, policies, contracts, training. It is not legal advice, and for a specific situation you should take professional advice.
It helps you keep the records and evidence the changes require, and to see what is current, but compliance depends on your decisions and processes. Complys does not guarantee legal compliance.
Yes — contracts, written particulars, policies and the records you must retain (including holiday records and right-to-work evidence) sit in the worker record with the relevant dates and reminders.
Yes, as part of the same worker record — though Complys keeps the evidence rather than performing the checks. See our right to work and DBS content.
General information about Complys and about employment compliance, not legal advice. Employment obligations are set by legislation and government guidance; confirm your duties and take professional advice where needed. Reviewed 26 September 2026.
