Employment Rights in Contact Centres: 6 Powerful WFM Strategies

On 18th December 2025, the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA) became UK law. As its name suggests, the new ERA is designed to strengthen UK workers’ rights, giving them increased job security, more predictable income, and increased control over their working hours. Strictly speaking, it applies only in England, Scotland and Wales. Scottish ministers have the right to make minor changes or exclusions to it, but in practice, it will apply fully in Scotland. And while employment law is devolved in Northern Ireland, the NI Assembly is already working on the Good Jobs Employment Rights Bill, which is likely to make similar provisions to the ERA.

Regardless of where you are located in the UK, you need strategies for complying with the Employment Rights Act in your contact centre. The goal is to satisfy the requirements of the Act, while maintaining or improving the efficiency of your business and the service you deliver to your customers. According to ContactBabel, over one million people are employed in UK call and contact centres. The purpose of this post is to explore the demands of the Employee Rights Act in contact centres, and to suggest some solid ways to respond to them.

What’s in the ERA?

Although the ERA became law in December 2025, its provisions take effect gradually. You can read the details on the UK government website, but here is a summary of what is coming and when:

How should contact centres prepare for the ERA?

Spoiler alert: Workforce management (WFM) is going to be important. By definition, WFM is all about optimising the deployment of the most valuable resource in every contact centre: the employees. While WFM isn’t relevant to some provisions of the ERA, such as strike ballot rules and whistleblower protection, good WFM practice directly addresses many of the most challenging aspects of the ERA. Some parts of the WFM cycle will need to evolve, and we explore this below. But WFM has the potential to help contact centres comply with the ERA while maintaining or improving KPIs.

Let’s take a look at some strategies that can transform the Employment Rights Act in contact centres from a threat into an opportunity:

1. Rethink the onboarding process
2. Double down on productivity
3. Make schedule flexibility a win-win
4. Manage sickness and bereavement leave more closely
5. Fine-tune intraday management
6. Find alternatives to zero-hour contracts

1. Rethink the onboarding process

For many years, new starters in contact centres have typically needed to successfully pass through a probation period of between one and 6 months. But employers always had the option to dismiss agents, for any reason, for up to 2 years, without the risk of being accused of unfair dismissal. The ERA reduces that threshold to just 6 months.

Contact centre leaders must now determine whether new hires are a good fit more quickly than before. It’s time to take the probation period even more seriously. That means:

• Hiring the right agents in the first place, which is, of course, easier said than done! Greater diligence certainly makes the hiring process longer and more costly. But including role plays, simulated calls, psychometric evaluation and language testing will avoid inappropriate hires
• ‘Failing early’ if there are clear signs that a new recruit isn’t a good fit. For example, in the case of excessive absences, poor quality scores or low training achievement, there should be a rapid escalation. WFM analytics reveal patterns of absence and schedule adherence
• Having a more formal structure to onboarding, with defined checkpoint dates on which metrics such as absences, quality, schedule adherence and schedule conformance are evaluated. Monthly checkpoints are a good idea. And WFM software is an invaluable source of the required information
• Bringing forward training to ensure that new agents can adequately perform all the tasks that will be assigned to them, before the 6-month deadline. That is especially true now that AI takes care of the simpler customer queries, leaving human agents to handle the more complex ones, as discussed in this blog post
• Documenting everything because you must share with new hires the metrics against which they will be evaluated. If performance improvement actions are needed, make sure these are documented, too. Team leaders must be aware of the need for careful record-keeping for new hires. The documentation will be essential in case of a later claim for unfair dismissal

Even if there’s a shortage of talent in the local labour pool, leaders need to make tough decisions before the 6-month deadline.

2. Double down on productivity

Two things are crystal clear about the ERA: it makes it more expensive to employ workers and more difficult to dismiss them. Workers in several EU countries already have rights and protections that exceed those in the ERA. Germany and France have notoriously strong labour laws, for example. Despite this, the UK Office for National Statistics estimates that German workers are on average 10% more productive than their UK counterparts and French workers 18% more productive.

There is a strong indication that strong labour laws and high productivity are linked. Of course, there are many reasons behind differences in productivity from one country to another. And the term ‘productivity’ has a specific definition in contact centres, as explained in this blog post. But there are two inescapable facts:

1. If it is costly to employ people and difficult to lay them off, you need to be especially sure you need more people before you hire.
2. When employees are on the payroll, you must ensure they are supported to be as productive as possible.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already being deployed in contact centres. It promises to handle more and more customer interactions that were previously handled by human agents. The business case for AI is largely about reducing headcount. The ERA provides an additional incentive for contact centres to explore and expand the use of AI.

When it comes to improving the productivity of contact centre agents, workforce management (WFM) software is a proven tool.

WFM enables:

• Accurate workload forecasting across all contact channels, so you know when you need staff on duty and when you don’t
• Efficient staff scheduling that minimises the gap between required and provided staffing, so you can avoid periods of over- and understaffing
• Informed intraday management to maintain efficiency in the face of on-the-day challenges
• Employee self-service with features that boost engagement and reduce staff churn
• Powerful analysis with tools such as real-time schedule adherence monitoring and historical adherence reporting

Optimised scheduling in particular enables consistent, sustainable levels of agent occupancy by closely matching the peaks and troughs in customer demand with on-duty agents who have the right skills. This aspect of WFM alone enables significant increases in agent productivity. You can read some case studies here.

Make schedule flexibility a win-win

‘Flexible’ is an ambiguous term. Contact centres want agents to be ‘flexible’ about their working times, so that staffing levels can be aligned with the peaks and troughs in customer demand. On the other hand, agents want the contact centre to be ‘flexible’ about the shifts they are given, so they can better align their personal commitments and preferences with their working hours. It is, of course, the second type of ‘flexibility’ that the ERA seeks to promote.

Since April 2024, employees have had the right to request flexible working from day one. Employers have not, however, been forced to grant every request. Employers are only required to grant requests that are ‘reasonable and feasible,’ and this remains the case with the 2025 ERA. There are eight legally acceptable reasons for declining a request:

1. The burden of additional costs
2. An inability to reorganise work among existing staff
3. An inability to recruit additional staff
4. A detrimental impact on quality
5. A detrimental impact on performance
6. A detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand
7. Insufficient work is available during the proposed times
8. Planned structural changes

If one or more of these reasons apply, the application may be declined without breaching the ERA. The 2025 ERA goes further. It requires employers to explain in detail why rejecting a request is reasonable. This is where WFM comes in.

A good WFM system enables you to:

• Quantify cost implications. Staffing calculations and scheduling can be used to determine any additional cost of covering a shift change, e.g. overtime payments or hiring additional staff. WFM supports the refusal reason ‘burden of additional costs’
• Show staffing constraints. Schedules can be used to show that, were the request to be granted, customer demand could not be covered without overtime or damage to customer service. WFM supports the refusal reason ‘inability to reorganise work among existing staff’
• Determine the impact on performance or quality. ‘What-if’ scheduling using historical data can reveal whether a proposed schedule change would reduce coverage and therefore service level. WFM supports the refusal reasons ‘detrimental impact on quality’ and ‘detrimental impact on performance’
• Demonstrate the impact on coverage of staffing requirements. If a proposed working pattern leaves gaps during peak times, WFM supports the refusal reason ‘detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand’
• Produce objective evidence that WFM systems store forecasts and schedules. They report important performance indicators. They provided documented proof that the employer evaluated the request objectively, not subjectively

Being proactive with flexibility

It’s important to have a defence against requests for flexible working that put the business in peril. But it’s also important to have a satisfied, loyal, motivated workforce and low staff turnover. Well-run contact centres have offered flexible working to their agents for many years, without being compelled to do so by legislation. The trick is to give agents a say in their working times, while ensuring that there are always sufficient agents in their seats to handle customer demand, while avoiding wasteful periods of overstaffing. This is where WFM comes in again.

A good WFM system allows you to:

• Capture agent availability periods and working time preferences, then factor them into the scheduling process

• Introduce shift bidding whereby agents can place requests for shifts that have already been optimised around demand
• Enable self-service shift swaps and time off requests, which are great for boosting agent engagement

Manage sickness and bereavement leave more closely

Did you hear about the agent who attended the funeral of 4 grandmothers in a single year? Or the agent who had 3 hip replacements? These may be apocryphal stories, but they highlight an important truth: While the vast majority of people are hard-working, honest and diligent, there is a small minority who let their colleagues, their employer and themselves down by finding ways to avoid being at work.

Now that agents can take sick leave and bereavement leave from day one, carefully managing sickness and bereavement is no longer a nice-to-have. As Peter Drucker famously advised, “you can't manage what you don't measure”. It follows that accurate recording and reporting on absences of all kinds is now a must-have. If you have a WFM system, verify that it allows you to record absences with the required level of detail, and run reports to help you manage sickness, bereavement, and other absence types.

5. Fine-tune intraday management

Every professionally-run contact centre has a well-rehearsed intraday management playbook, or ‘plan to react’. The playbook defines what action to take in case things don’t go according to plan, e.g., contact volumes differ markedly from what was forecast, or staff absence levels are not what was expected. We explored the anatomy of a ‘plan to react’ in a popular webinar and you can watch the video here.

Very commonly, the plan to react will include:

• If KPIs are below target and the service goals are not being met → Extend existing shifts, potentially offering overtime
• If KPIs are above target and service goals are being exceeded → Offer time off at short notice

The ERA states that agents must receive ‘reasonable notice’ of their shifts and of changes to their shifts. If insufficient notice is given, the employer may have to make a short-notice compensation payment. The definition of ‘reasonable notice’ has not yet been published, however it is likely that making changes to shifts on the same day will be deemed short notice. That impacts an important lever of intraday management.

What’s the solution? If you ask an agent to stay longer or take time off on the same day and they agree, realistically, there’s no issue. You should be aware that the agent is legally entitled to disagree or demand a short-notice payment. To avoid misunderstandings, it would be prudent to communicate to your agents that short-notice changes to shifts will sometimes be needed. This could be done informally by the team leader, but ideally it would form part of the contract of employment.

In some contact centres, intraday management resembles constant fire-fighting rather than taking occasional, deliberately planned corrective action. This situation usually arises when forecasts are constantly inaccurate, or schedules rarely match ‘supply’ with ‘demand’. Making short-notice changes to shifts should be a last resort. If you’re having to do it frequently in your contact centre, the ERA is providing a strong incentive to take a fresh look at your forecasting and scheduling practices and your WFM software.

6. Find alternatives to zero-hour contracts

Few UK contact centres employ agents on zero-hour contracts, but for those that do, the ERA is going to make life more complicated. The goal of the ERA is to reduce ‘one-sided flexibility’, which focuses on the needs of the employer, while giving employees little predictability of working times or pay.

Workers on zero-hours or low-hours contracts will have the right to a guaranteed number of hours based on their actual working pattern over a reference period. The length of the reference period has not yet been defined, but it is likely to be 12 weeks. For example, if an agent has routinely worked 35 hours per week over 12 weeks, they can legally demand a 35-hour contract. This part of the ERA applies to agency workers as well as in-house employees.

For businesses in highly volatile, long-hours or seasonal industries, zero-hour contracts have been a useful, if controversial, tool. Contact centre workload is often characterised by peaks and troughs in demand. This variable workload is notoriously difficult to cover with full-time employees without creating periods of wasteful over-staffing. Zero-hour agents can be brought in for short shifts to cover the peaks and thus more precisely match supply and demand. Obviously, this is less than ideal from the employee’s perspective and that’s why the ERA contains clauses about zero-hour contracts.

There are some attractive solutions for contact centres moving away from zero-hour contracts:

• Introduce more part-time contracts where employees are contracted to work less than the equivalent of 5 full working days per week. WFM schedule optimisation works very well with part-time contracts

• Introduce annualised-hour contracts where employees are paid the same salary every week or month, but the hours worked per week vary between peak seasons and quiet seasons

• Make greater use of overtime to fill staffing gaps, rather than agents on zero-hour contracts

• Use 'gig workers'. They are self-employed, so the ERA does not apply to them. Gig workers are increasingly part of the contact centre staffing landscape, as explored in this blog post.

Key takeaways

The 2025 Employment Rights Act is designed to give employees increased job security, more predictable income, and greater control over their working hours. It places new demands and constraints on employers. By properly preparing for the Employment Rights Act in contact centres, you can transform a threat into an opportunity. Strategies to consider include:

• Rethink the onboarding process with smarter hiring, failing early, formalising the onboarding process, bringing forward training and keeping meticulous records
• Double down on productivity by accelerating the implementation of AI-based customer service and getting maximum value from WFM, in particular, optimised scheduling
• Make schedule flexibility a win-win by using solid evidence from WFM to respond to flexible work time requests and making shift bidding, availability, working time preferences and self-service shift swaps part of the planning process
• Manage sickness and bereavement more closely, bearing in mind that ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’, use WFM reports to keep track of absences
• Fine-tune intraday management, now that agents must have ‘reasonable notice’ of changes to their shifts. Short-term changes should be accepted in principle and the need for intraday adjustments should be reduced through better planning
• Find alternatives to zero-hour contracts, if you use them, by introducing more part-time contracts, annualised hours, greater use of overtime and ‘gig’ workers