Due to both the Autumn Budget 2024 and the Employment Rights Bill, we’re seeing employers already position themselves for changes to regulation, governance and budgets.
And employers are doing all this ahead of when women in tech and others in the UK workplace are actually due to be affected – but that is soon, tax year 2025/26 on April 6th 2025, writes Danielle Keegan, associate director of technology staffing specialists VIQU IT.
With the government’s reforms impacting the workplace ranging from underway and soon to next year and on the horizon (such as umbrella company regulation on April 6th 2026), it’s right to be proactive in pinpointing how the measures potentially help but also hinder women technologists.
First, the impact of Autumn Budget 2024 on women in tech
Increase in employer National Insurance Contributions and lower secondary threshold
Under Autumn Budget, employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) will increase from 13.8% to 15%, and the threshold at which point employers start paying NI will drop from £9,200 to £5,000.
The collective result? Employers are now anticipating much higher payroll costs.
Both measures take effect from the new tax year commencing April 6th 2025.
NI rise is higher than women in tech’s employers have budgeted for
This increase in employer NI contributions is higher than most inflationary expectations that employers had budgeted for when writing their 2025 recruitment budgets.
These increases will therefore hit bottom lines hard. After all, the extra payment to HMRC has to come from somewhere!
Therefore, salary increases and promotions are likely to take a hit, and with some women in tech already fighting for acknowledgement, I worry that some women in technology jobs will continue to be overlooked.
One tech staff employer is already cutting due to the employer NICs rise
Already, I have one client who has made our tech staffing team aware that their workforce planning for next year has been reduced due to the contents of Autumn Budget 2024
And impacting women and others occupying the employer’s existing tech roles, a planned inflationary rise in salaries for all staff now won’t happen.
Tech job creation in 2025 to be hit by the April 2025 employer NICs hike
We anticipate that the creation of new jobs in the tech sector will likely slow in 2025, as employers grapple with these new unexpected costs related to higher National Insurance.
Unfortunately, with budgets tightening, we expect that initiatives to encourage upward mobility for women in tech might be put on the back burner.
National Minimum Wage (NMW) increases – don’t bode well for IT employers
The National Minimum Wage will increase for those aged 18-20 and for those 21+ from April 6th 2025.
Currently, the average salary for graduate and entry-level roles in the UK is far higher than the national average. In fact, according to The Graduate Market in 2024 (‘High Fliers Research’), for graduate vacancies at the top 100 UK employers in 2025, the median starting salary in technology companies is £33,500.
Therefore, although the April 6th 2025 NMW rise is unlikely to directly impact women looking to work in tech, notably in entry-level tech positions, I do think the IT workforce in general will experience less job creation — with tighter budgets to boot, meaning the average tech worker will regretfully be adversely affected (to some extent).
Enhanced Research and Development credits
On a brighter note, Autumn Budget announced a new reform which will facilitate businesses that engage in Research & Development (R&D) within the technology sector, to claim higher rates of tax relief.
R&D is the key to the evolution and success of the UK tech sector, extending to its sub-sectors like Digital and AI, so this ‘shot in the arm’ is welcome news for the technology industry, women included.
Second, the Employment Rights Bill’s impact on women in tech
"Day One" rights
As part of the government’s Make Work Pay campaign, new plans for the Employment Rights Bill suggest the introduction of “Day One” rights for employees is imminent.
This will mean that employees (including in the tech sector) no longer have to work for the employer for a certain length of time to have the same protections that longer-serving employees already benefit from.
Maternity pay
Currently, women only qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) once they’ve worked continuously for the same employer for at least 26 weeks.
The 26-week threshold can severely constrain the careers of women in tech who may aspire to gain a breadth of experience by working for a variety of organisations at the same time as having a family.
After all, not all pregnancies are as well planned as a Gantt Chart!
So Labour’s promise to bring in rights from the very first day of employment should mean that a woman who has just joined a tech company should have the same rights to SMP as a woman who has worked for that tech company for years.
I’m delighted at this potential change to SMP.
It will encourage women to keep moving in their tech careers, instead of sticking in a role without progression, but with protection should they want to start a family.
I hope it will maximise career opportunities for women in tech, which should naturally encourage increases in salaries.
Unfair dismissal
As part of Labour’s worker rights package, employees will have the right to claim all types of unfair dismissal from the outset of their role.
This is certainly positive news for workers in general, but especially for women in tech.
If we draw on some well-known stereotypes — men typically take more risks and are more opportunistic, whereas women are less inclined to take a leap of faith and move roles.
So the hope is that this — combined with new protection for expecting and new parents — will encourage women in tech to be more daring with their career moves, which will support upward career mobility across the IT sector.
Where Labour’s upgrade to worker rights could hurt women technologists
However, two elements of Labour’s workers’ rights upgrade could negatively affect women in tech:
i) The reform is heavily caveated with a proposal around a 9-month probationary period which we believe will essentially facilitate termination of employment without a proper process.
ii) The new worker rights from day one of employment create further risk for employers. Therefore, I think we can expect a rise in Fixed Term Contracts (FTC), where the employer can take someone on a permanent salary but for 3, 6 or 12-month contracts — with the carrot they might go permanent. However, if there is any performance issue, the employer can simply not renew the worker’s contract without fear of retribution.
I believe this could be a significant chink in the armour for women in tech.
If the stereotypes I mentioned above are somewhat accurate, and with less protection/stability with FTCs, I fear it’s likely that women in tech will be negatively impacted in the near future.
Flexible working
Employees have been able to ask for flexible working arrangements from the very first day of the job since April 1st 2024.
But employers will now have to consider the flexible working request against the new statutory grounds for refusal, meaning that each request will need to be properly assessed before a decision is made.
I think this right to request flexibility coupled with the stricter conditions for employers to be able to refuse sounds great in theory — and would certainly benefit women in tech!
But the reality is that there are lots of caveats, and an employer who previously didn’t want to facilitate flexible working arrangements is unlikely to change their tune because of this reform.
Zero-hour contracts / guaranteed HOURS contracts
We’ve seen lots of negative news coverage over zero-hour contracts and how employers can take advantage by using them. So it’s tricky not to welcome what appears to be positive changes by Labour for ‘gig economy’ workers.
With the reform, employees who work regular amounts of hours over a 12-week period can request a guaranteed hours contract.
This is positive for working women in general.
A possible boon for women working ad-hoc in tech and IT
However, I wouldn’t say there is a significant percentage of tech workers in such arrangements who are currently concerned with issues over regular hours.
I do think it’s positive that many freelancers, for example, who would prefer to continue a zero-hour arrangement, can choose to do so.
This could benefit a handful of women in tech who support businesses on an ad-hoc basis due to the flexibility it brings.
Gender pay gap action plans & menopause support
Employers of 250+ people will now be required to share gender pay gap action plans, in addition to supporting employees through menopause.
I fully support this measure, however, I don’t think it goes far enough.
The UK is home to 74,844 technology companies, with 92.5% of those being small or medium-sized businesses (meaning they employ fewer than 99 people). Therefore, the actual percentage of women working in tech that this positive-sounding reform will benefit appears questionable.
What Autumn Budget 2024 SHOULD have contained
– Explicit support for women in tech!
I think the government should be doing more to encourage women to go into technical apprenticeships, study at university for technical degrees, and/or go into their first technical role, through bursaries and other initiatives.
– On-site childcare
A couple of private sector businesses we support have creches on-site, and offer their employees discounted rates depending on the amount of maternity leave taken.
I’ve seen how much of a benefit this dual offering is for working parents and people who want to have children in the near future. So I’d love to see the government actively encourage businesses to offer on-site childcare facilities to support women in rejoining the tech workforce sooner.
Final thought: Labour’s start for women in tech? Supportive but contains risks
To conclude, I’ve seen lots of articles and LinkedIn posts heralding the Autumn Budget and Employment Rights Bill as big steps in the right direction for women in tech. And I agree to an extent.
New rights for workers from day one of tech employment will certainly give some women the confidence they need to make positive upward changes in their careers, which is something I celebrate wholeheartedly.
However, through my lens of tech recruitment, I do worry that overall, these changes have the potential to create more risks and will impact the bottom line for businesses, meaning they’ll be increasingly cautious with their hiring in 2025, which doesn’t bode well for women in tech.
Danielle Keegan
Danielle Keegan is a technical IT recruiter with 14+ years’ experience in identifying and securing the best permanent IT talent for businesses across the UK.
As an associate director and head of permanent recruitment at VIQU IT, Danielle plays a pivotal role in driving the business forward and contributing to innovative solutions for VIQU’s clients and candidates.
Danielle is passionate about encouraging more women to consider careers in tech and takes prides herself in leading the conversation at VIQU IT and among her client base. These efforts include spearheading a Women in Tech interview series and introducing new processes to household name clients to reduce unconscious bias and encourage more opportunities for women working in tech.
