Understanding the rights differences
Before you can manage a mixed workforce well, you need to be clear on where the legal lines sit. Most employers either overcomplicate this or get it dangerously wrong.
Casual workers and permanent employees both get: the National Minimum Wage for every hour worked, 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave (calculated differently for casual workers), statutory sick pay from day one (since April 2026), and protection from unlawful discrimination.
Where they differ: notice periods and entitlements accrue with permanent contracts, unfair dismissal protection currently requires two years' service (reducing to six months in January 2027), and enhanced company sick pay or maternity pay may be reserved for permanent staff in your company policy.
Making the mixed team work in practice
One rota, not two systems
The single biggest practical mistake is managing permanent and casual workers in separate systems. Your permanent team goes on the spreadsheet; your casuals get a WhatsApp message; your agency workers come through a third system entirely. Nobody has a complete picture of who is working when.
The operational benefit of having everyone in one rota view — regardless of employment type — is that you can see gaps and conflicts across the whole team. You are not cross-referencing three different sources to work out if Tuesday is covered.
Consistent communication, different contracts
Casual workers should receive their shifts and any changes to them in the same way as permanent staff — through a system they can check, not through a separate informal channel. The fact that their contract is different does not mean their experience of the rota should be worse.
Since February 2026, employers and agencies are legally required to give agency workers reasonable notice of shifts. The same principle applies to your directly-employed casuals, even where there is no specific legal minimum for non-agency workers.
Performance management across worker types
This is where most managers either avoid the issue or get it wrong. You cannot simply stop calling a casual worker as a way to manage out a performance problem — especially as the unfair dismissal qualifying period shortens to six months in January 2027.
If a casual worker is underperforming, document it. Have a conversation. Follow your disciplinary process. The fact that they have a zero-hours contract does not mean they have no employment protection — it means their rights are sometimes different, not absent.
Favouriting and reliability
Most managers develop a mental list of casual workers they rely on and those they do not. Formalising this — tracking attendance, punctuality, and task completion across both worker types — gives you data rather than gut feeling. It also means you can defend decisions about who gets offered shifts if a worker ever challenges you.
ERA 2025 implications for mixed workforces
The Employment Rights Act 2025 changes the management calculus for casual workers in two significant ways. First, the guaranteed hours right arriving in 2027 means casual workers who regularly work consistent hours will be entitled to be offered a contract that reflects that — blurring the line between casual and permanent over time.
Second, the reduction in the unfair dismissal qualifying period means a casual worker who has been coming in regularly since July 2026 will be protected from January 2027. The window in which you can let someone go informally is narrowing significantly.
Action required: If you have casual workers who have been working consistent patterns for six months or more, ERA 2025 should prompt a review of whether their arrangement still reflects reality — and whether you need to update their contracts before the guaranteed hours right lands.
Manage your whole team in one place
FlexiWork puts permanent staff, casuals, and agency workers on one rota. ERA 2025 compliance records build automatically for every worker type.
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