From April 2026, SSP will move to “day-one” entitlement (no three-day waiting period) and the lower earnings limit will be scrapped so low-paid and variable-hours workers qualify. Employees will be paid the lower of the flat SSP rate or 80% of their normal weekly earnings—broadening eligibility and bringing forward when payments start. These reforms sit within the Employment Rights Bill implementation roadmap published this year.

On paper, that improves fairness and income security. In practice, it creates immediate operational headaches for employers. Payroll and HR teams will need to re-engineer rules to calculate 80% of “normal weekly earnings” accurately for staff with irregular hours, holiday top-ups or commissions, and to ensure day-one payments trigger automatically. For SMEs without sophisticated systems, the risk of over- and under-payment—and subsequent disputes—rises sharply. Relevant Industry Sector briefings are already urging employers to audit policies, amend contracts and train line managers well before April 2026.

Cash-flow planning also gets tougher. With day-one entitlement, SSP outflows start earlier and for more people. Government messaging suggests as many as 1.3 million low-wage workers will newly receive either 80% of average weekly earnings or the statutory flat rate (whichever is lower), expanding the number of eligible claims from day one.

All this is landing against a sickness landscape that, while off its recent peak, remains historically elevated. Official ONS figures show 148.9 million working days lost to sickness in 2024—an average of 4.4 days per worker—with a sickness absence rate of 2.0% of working hours (still above the pre-pandemic baseline). Independent analyses peg the wider “hidden” cost of sickness—including lost productivity, cover, and management time—at around £103 billion in 2023. Even a modest uptick in absences that now qualify from day one will magnify those costs under the new rules.

Operationally, managers and business owners will have less time to triage short-term absences. Today, many day-one and day-two illnesses resolve before SSP kicks in; from April 2026, those same events carry a payroll consequence and require cleaner evidence trails. Employers will need tighter processes for self-certification, earlier occupational-health signposting, and faster return-to-work conversations to prevent “drift.”

Systems and policy changes aside, the commercial risk is productivity. UK employers are already investing in earlier health interventions such as virtual GP access to curb lost days and shorten episodes. Employers who implement these supports before April 2026 will be better placed to stabilise absence durations and SSP exposure when the new rules bite.

1Stop4aGP provides a practical solution to this emerging issue:

1Stop4aGP gives employees—and their immediate families—24/7 access to UK-registered GPs by telephone or secure video link. That means same-day medical advice and treatment plans without waiting weeks for an appointment, helping employees recover sooner and cutting absence duration under the new SSP regime. The service is always available 24/7, simple to implement, and designed for employers who need reliable, rapid clinical support to keep their workforces healthy.

With tighter rules arriving in April 2026, the winners will be the organisations that combine compliant payroll processes with proactive, immediate access to care. Help your clients to be ready for the coming changes, contact us today about how you can offer this service to your clients.