The retail workforce and ERA 2025
UK retail has a higher proportion of part-time and variable-hours workers than almost any other sector. The British Retail Consortium estimates that around 60% of retail employees work part-time, and many of those are on zero-hours or low-hours contracts — particularly in smaller independents, fashion retail, and food-to-go.
ERA 2025 does not target retail specifically, but its provisions land squarely on the workforce patterns retailers depend on. SSP from day one, holiday pay record-keeping, and the guaranteed hours right from 2027 all affect the way flexible retail staffing works.
What is already in force
SSP from day one (April 2026)
A Saturday casual who works two shifts a week and calls in sick on Friday is now entitled to SSP from day one, regardless of how much they earned last week. Update your absence process, brief your supervisors, and check your payroll setup. Getting this wrong — telling a casual worker they do not qualify — is an underpayment claim waiting to happen.
Holiday pay records (April 2026)
You must now keep records of annual leave and holiday pay for every worker, including casual and zero-hours staff. If your holiday records for part-timers are informal, you are already non-compliant. On the calculation method: from 1 January 2024, rolled-up holiday pay at 12.07% per payslip is explicitly lawful again for genuine irregular hours and zero-hours workers under the Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023. The 52-week average is also permitted. The key requirement is that whichever method you use is correctly applied and records are maintained.
NMW increase (April 2026)
The National Minimum Wage rose to £12.71 for workers aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026. For a typical retail operation with 15 part-time staff averaging 18 hours per week, this represents a meaningful increase in annualised wage costs. Review your pricing and margin assumptions accordingly.
ERA 2025 and seasonal retail staff
Seasonal workers present a specific question under ERA 2025. The guaranteed hours right is based on a reference period — expected to be 12 weeks. A genuinely short-term seasonal engagement of 6–8 weeks would not reach the reference period threshold, so the guaranteed hours right would not apply during that single season.
However, workers brought back for multiple consecutive seasons — a common practice in retail — may over time develop a pattern of regular work that ERA 2025 will recognise. If you have people who come back every Christmas and every summer, the cumulative picture of their relationship with your business is changing legally.
Good practice for seasonal staff: Be clear in writing at the start of each seasonal engagement that it is fixed-term and temporary. Do not allow the arrangement to drift into the appearance of an ongoing employment relationship. If the same person returns repeatedly, take advice on whether their status has changed.
The guaranteed hours right in retail: 2027
For a retail operator, the workers most likely to trigger the guaranteed hours right are those in roles that are nominally casual but practically regular — weekend supervisors, stockroom staff, or checkout assistants who work predictable patterns week after week.
The obligation is not to force anyone onto a fixed-hours contract — it is to offer one. Workers can decline and remain on their flexible arrangement. But the offer must be made at the end of each qualifying 12-week period, and you need the data to calculate it.
That data — actual hours per worker per week — needs to exist. If you are currently not recording when each casual worker actually starts and finishes each shift, start now. Every week of data you collect from this point onwards is a week of reference period data you have available when 2027 arrives.
ERA 2025 compliance for retail — built in
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