5 Things to Review Before the Second Half of 2026

Are you getting the best out of your team?

Are people issues taking up more of your time than they should?

Are you managing your people proactively or just reacting to problems as they land?

If the answer to any of those is not a confident yes, the five areas below will help you identify where the gaps are and what to focus on before H2.

1. Absence: What are the trends actually telling you?

Pull your absence data from January to June and review it carefully.

Not just the total number of days lost but the patterns behind them. Are they the same people? The same team? The same time of month? Sometimes absence clusters around a particular manager, and that tells you something important about what is happening on the ground.

With day one Statutory Sick Pay now in force, you may already be feeling the financial impact of short-term absence more acutely than before.

When you cost absence, do not just count the days. Factor in what it actually costs the business. Agency cover, overtime for the rest of the team, delayed work, and the time you personally spend rearranging things. In a small business, even a few days of unplanned absence can hit harder than most owners expect.

2. Turnover: Who have you lost and why?

Think carefully about who has left since January. Were those departures avoidable? Did you see them coming, or did they catch you off guard?

More importantly, were they people you could afford to lose or people you really needed to keep?

Replacement cost is one of the most underestimated expenses in a small business. By the time you factor in recruitment fees, interview time, training a new person, and the months it takes before they are fully productive, losing one good employee can easily cost tens of thousands of pounds.

Now ask yourself an uncomfortable question. Are the right people staying or just the ones who have nowhere else to go?

If your strongest performers have left and your underperformers are sitting comfortably, something needs to change in H2.

3. Performance: Are the right people in the right roles?

This is something we see regularly. Underperformers get left alone because addressing them feels harder than avoiding them. Meanwhile, your best people pick up the slack, get frustrated, and eventually leave.

It is an expensive cycle and one that is entirely avoidable with the right approach.

On the other side of that question, are your strongest people being stretched and developed? Or are they doing the same work they were doing in January with no sign of progression? Good people do not stay where they feel stuck.

4. Compliance: Have you kept up with the 2026 changes?

The Employment Rights Act is rolling out in phases, and several significant changes have already landed this year.

Have you actioned the April changes? Contracts updated, policies reviewed, and SSP adjustments made?

The six-month unfair dismissal qualifying period comes into force on 1 January 2027, and it applies to anyone hired from 1 July 2026. If your probation and dismissal processes have not been updated to reflect that, you are running out of time.

October brings further changes, including the new duty to prevent sexual harassment and stronger trade union access requirements.

If you are not sure which changes apply to your business and which ones you have already dealt with, that gap in knowledge is a risk in itself.

5. Manager capability: Are your managers ready for H2?

Your managers are the people making day-to-day decisions about your team. Performance reviews, absence conversations, conduct issues, and everything in between.

Have they had the training they need for the new legal landscape? Are they handling issues consistently across teams, or is one manager following the process while another is improvising?

Do they know what is coming in the second half of the year?

Under the current rules, gaps in manager capability create real legal exposure. Your managers need to be part of the solution in H2, not an additional source of risk.

What your answers tell you

If you rated yourself amber or red on more than one of these five areas, the second half of the year needs a plan. Not more of the same.

Doing nothing different and hoping things will improve is how small problems become expensive ones.

How we can support you

We work with small business owners to review their H1 people data, identify the gaps, and build a focused, practical plan for the second half of the year.

Halfway through 2026 is the right moment to take stock. The businesses that use this window well will be in a significantly stronger position by December.

Get in touch for a confidential chat, and we will run through your key areas together.

📞 0161 757 7576
📧 info@hrtoolbox.co.uk
🌐 www.hrtoolbox.co.uk