From April 2026, the Employment Rights Act will come into effect, bringing reforms to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) that will affect every employer.

Given the scope of the change, it is understandable that this will have a major impact on how payroll is processed.

For payroll professionals, the time has come to consider whether they are ready to adapt.

What are the changes to SSP?

The overhaul of SSP is designed to open the door to who can claim it and when.

This means that statutory barriers that put enough time between an employee and their SSP to get payroll records organised are going to be scrapped.

No more will employees have to wait three days before they can start claiming SSP.

Instead, they will be entitled to SSP from the first day of sickness.

Alongside this, more employees than ever before will be able to claim SSP.

This is due to the removal of the Lower Earnings Limit (LEL), so payroll professionals should expect to see lower income and part-time employees pop up when handling SSP going forward.

All of this is combined with a recalculation of SSP itself.

The SSP payment rate will be the lower of:

  • 80 per cent of Average Weekly Earnings (AWE)
  • The standard SSP flat rate, which is rising to £123.25 per week

These changes are designed to better reflect the value of pay for an employee while maintaining a statutory minimum.

How will this impact payroll professionals?

Given the speed with which SSP may now need to be assigned, it is vital that payroll systems can keep pace.

It may also be worth ensuring that percentage-based SSP calculations can be done quickly and efficiently.

If you are handling payroll processing for clients, then the only way to keep pace with the changes would be to have a way to quickly and reliably get the required information.

While clients will need to be fast with handling information on their end, they may be unaware of the changes or their obligations.

It is worth briefing clients ahead of time so that they can stay compliant.

Ultimately, being able to secure information and implement changes rapidly is about to become an essential part of payroll processing.

Glasscubes enables you to collect all the information you need in one secure workflow.

You do not need to waste your time chasing clients, as you can set recurring, automated reminders for them to provide any required information.

Additionally, Glasscubes enables you to see with transparency what work is being done and whether something is signed off on or up-to-date.

This stops teams from beginning work with incomplete or old data, enabling them to move forward with confidence that the work they are doing will be beneficial to the client.

Book a demo today to find out how to make your payroll processing more dynamic.