Sweep away your outdated HR

It’s called spring cleaning for a reason. Spring is a time of fresh starts and regeneration as longer hours of daylight, warmer weather and beautiful blossoms create positive energy and feel-good vibes. The Victorians coined the phrase in English, but humankind has been spring cleaning for millennia.

It’s a particularly good time to apply the principle to your HR, too. We’d recommend reviewing policies and paperwork periodically anyway, so why not wrap it up in that spring feel-good factor. 

Here’s a general look at the areas you could focus your HR spring clean on, with some added focus on matters that require special attention in 2026.

Employment contracts

If you didn’t review your employment contracts on a yearly basis they would quickly go out of date and have you offering or denying rights that were not aligned with the law. This is one of the main reasons why Googling “employment contracts”, instead of having them professionally drafted for your company, is a bad idea. A search engine may give you a contract from ten years ago!

This year, consider that in December anyone working for you via a digital platform where you exert control over them will need to be classified as an employee.

Pay

You need to review pay each year to ensure that it reflects the national minimum wage. But also, commercially, to ensure that your pay is in line with market expectation and/or your business goals, especially since inflation has been such an issue in recent years.

From 1st January 2026, the adult minimum wage increased to €14.15 per hour (aged 20 and over), with lower wage rates for younger workers: €12.74 for people age 19, €11.32 for 18-year-olds and €9.91 for under-18s.

Policies

Your policies are often where you’ll really need to roll your sleeves up with the spring cleaning, as there is a lot of detail to cover.

In recent years we have seen the introduction and evolution of statutory sick pay, restrictions on the use of NDAs in some circumstances and a code of practice on the right to switch off. And at the start of 2026, pension auto-enrolment was introduced. It’s worth spring cleaning all your policies, but ensuring these changes are reflected is a good place to start.

An AI policy is useful to have and keep updated in 2026. Although delayed for now, the (EU) AI Act will require further change when it fully comes into force.

Company handbook and communication 

By its definition, HR directly affects your staff. So when you review HR and make changes and updates, communicating this to your team is an essential part of the job of the HR spring clean.

We are big proponents of company handbooks which wrap up all your policies into one document. This can then be easily shared with staff and used as a point of reference. An email or other bulletin is a good additional way to communicate key changes.

How we can help

We’ve shared the main areas which you may like to include in your HR spring clean, but we can also help by doing it for you if you do not have the time, or just need an expert, thorough job done. To find out more, get in touch.