5 ATS Regulations to Stay on Top of in 2025

Compliance isn’t an annual tick-box exercise. It’s part of every job you post, every shortlist you make, every interview you run and every offer you send. The safest way to remain compliant is to build lawful habits into your hiring process itself.  

Futureproofing your hiring is essential, delays can put you at risk, and good intentions alone won’t cut it. This guide covers the key UK and EU regulations that impact recruitment, who they apply to, and what you can do right now to stay compliant. We’ll also explain why your applicant tracking system setup and data practices should form the backbone of your compliance strategies.  

We’ll cover:  

• Why you should future-proof your hiring now.  

• Why data transparency is non-negotiable. 

• The cost of waiting. 

• Why size doesn’t protect you, and why records matter. 

• Compliance starts with hiring. 

• The top UK and EU rules to know. 

• Your ATS and data practices at the forefront. 

Why you should future-proof your hiring now

The hiring landscape has shifted. Impacted by tightening rules and rising expectations, compliance alone is no longer enough, proof is now essential.  

Candidates expect fair treatment, a transparent process and clear and honest information about how their data is stored and used. Simultaneously, clients, investors and regulators require consistency and clear reasoning for every hiring decision.  

When it comes to compliance, timing is everything. Many obligations are triggered at predictable points in the hiring process: the job advert, the application form, during assessment, at offer and of course when you agree to retain or delete data. When your hiring process inherently supports the right action at the right moment, compliance becomes an effortless part of your routine.  

But when your actions are fighting your own process, small slips can rapidly snowball. This can cause costly rework, slow audits and place your business in the pathway of avoidable risk. The solution? Treat compliance as an operational problem you can design a solution for. Build simple rules and clear recording directly into your hiring workflows, so good practice doesn’t rely on memory, goodwill or last-minute fixes.  

Why data transparency is non-negotiable 

Building and maintaining trust around your hiring process depends on addressing two crucial areas:

1. Do people know what data you collect and why? 

1. Can you show what you did and when?  

In practice, this covers every step of the hiring process, from adverts and selection criteria, reasonable adjustments, panel notes, decision reasons, offers right through to data retention. If any of these steps isn’t properly captured, it’s almost impossible to defend. Clear notices and consistent records not only help candidates to understand their journey, but also help hiring teams make smarter, more robust decisions.  

Data transparency also improves hiring outcomes. When the steps are clear, more applications are completed. Managers give fairer feedback when they score against shared anchors, and legal and HR teams are able to meet requests for personal data without mining inboxes and chat channels.  

The basics are simple:  

• Collect only what you need.  

• Separate sensitive data from identity.  

• Limit access to data by role.  

• Keep on top of data retention.  

If you can do all this, then you’ll reduce complaints and create evidence that stands up to scrutiny, making audits a breeze.  Transparency should never be a burden. It’s how you keep quality and fairness visible.  

The cost of waiting

The cost of waiting waiting always feels like the simplest option, until a request comes in or a regulations threshold is reached. A Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) during peak hiring times can swallow up days of admin time if notes and messages sit across email and chat channels rather than in centralised hiring software. A cross-border vacancy can expose gaps in your compliance you didn’t anticipate – like adverts without salary bands in territories where they are required. Corrections are public and time-consuming. They impact your employer brand and erode candidate confidence. Ultimately, late fixes cost so much more than early design.

And, of course, there is a team cost too. When hiring data is scattered, people rebuild the same facts from scratch each time. Time that could be much better spent focusing on candidates. Delays can also impact reputation – pulling an advert or missing a reporting window raises questions with candidates, clients and boards.

The better path is steady and intentional. Design once. Apply every time. By adding the right fields, guidance and audit trails to your hiring flow now, you make future regulation thresholds feel like simple activations, rather than firefighting.

Many regulations begin at key headcount thresholds or when you employ people in particular countries. Business growth, a new contract, or a small EU office can move you from “not yet” to “live” in a matter of months. Therefore, it’s important to plan for the future state of your business.  

You do this by tracking the data you need before you have to publish it, and by storing it in a way that makes auditing simple. This might include consistent job levels, offer data tied to roles, and clean integrations from candidate records to HR and payroll.  

Good records also help you recruit. If you want to explain a pay narrative, or show hiring progress by group, you need data you can trust. Evidence always beats recollection. By building habits early, you can meet new rules and regulations without fuss and answer hard questions with confidence.  

Compliance starts with hiring 

Most regulatory obligations touch the hiring process first. From job ads and application questions to adjustments, interview scoring, offers and pre-employment checks – all leave an important audit trail.  

Get these initial moments right, and everything downstream, including payroll, reporting and external audits, is significantly easier. If you get them wrong, those errors might be carried over. Treat hiring as your primary compliance gateway. Design it specifically to guide people though the right steps. Keep selection criteria and decision reasoning well-documented inside the system, clearly showing who did what and when. Make sure you add location rules, so that the right disclosures (such as salary bands) appear when they are needed.  When the process is well-designed and clear, it promotes fairness and removes avoidable risk.   

The top UK and EU rules to keep on top of 2025

Disclaimer – this is general information, not legal advice. Always check local counsel and official guidance for the most up to date information. 

1. Gender Pay Gap Reporting, UK 

Applies to: Employers with 250 or more employees on the snapshot date. You must publish mean and median pay gaps, bonus gaps, and quartiles on GOV.UK and your site within a year.

Recruiters should: Capture clean offer data and job level, so HR can report accurately. Keep a link from the hiring record to payroll for starters.  

Do now: Align job architecture and test your data feed before the snapshot.  

Proof to keep: Starting pay, job level, and the basis for offers.

2. Equality Act 2010, UK 

Applies to: All UK employers. Covers recruitment, pay, training, promotion, and dismissal. Protects people with characteristics such as age, disability, race, and sex. Job applicants are covered.

Recruiters should: Use fair adverts and selection criteria, make reasonable adjustments for candidates, use consistent criteria, and documented reasons for decisions. You should also avoid asking about health unless an exception applies.

Do now: Publish an adjustments route, use anchored scoring for panels, and keep decision notes with the decision.  

Proof to keep: Criteria, scores, reasons, and adjustment records in a single audit trail. 

3. UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 

Applies to: All UK employers processing candidate data. Individuals have a right of access and can make a subject access request in writing or verbally. Most responses are due within one month.

Recruiters should: State what you collect and why, capture consent where needed, keep data secure, limit access, and control retention. You must locate and supply personal data when asked.

Do now: Map what you collect, set retention by role and country, and test a full DSAR run from request to response.  

Proof to keep: Privacy notices, consent logs, retention rules, and a complete export of notes and messages when requested. 

4. EU Pay Transparency Directive 

Applies to: Employers in EU member states, and non-EU employers with staff in an EU state. Member states must transpose by 7 June 2026. Obligations scale with size.

Recruiters should: Provide salary ranges in job adverts or by first interview, stop asking about salary history, and be ready to give pay information for comparable roles. If unexplained gaps exceed a set threshold, a joint pay assessment with employee representatives may be required. The burden of proof in pay discrimination claims can shift to the employer.  

Do now: Identify EU roles, agree band formats, remove salary history questions, and prepare standard wording for candidate information rights.  

Proof to keep: Adverts with bands, selection records, and pay data grouped by role. 

5. EU Artificial Intelligence Act 

Applies to: Organisations that place or use AI systems in the EU. Recruitment and employee management tools are likely to be treated as high-risk, with phased duties from 2025 to 2027.

Recruiters should: Document how AI is used, keep humans in the loop (HITL) , and be able to explain automated decisions.  

Do now: Inventory any AI in your hiring stack, define human oversight, and prepare technical and process notes.  

Proof to keep: Model documentation, risk controls, review checkpoints, and decision logs. 

Your ATS and Data Practices at the Forefront: How Reach ATS Can Help 

Compliance should live where work happens. Your ATS is where most of your legal obligations are triggered and recorded – actions like posting job ads, setting salary ranges, checking selection criteria, interview notes and scores. Not to mention job offers and those all-important pre-employment checks, such as Right to Work and DBS. By embedding compliance into your hiring workflow, it becomes an effortless part of your operating process. 

Good quality hiring software automatically triggers, requests and saves required documentation as candidates complete each recruitment step. This enables you to export a clean story in minutes when an audit or DSAR arrives. So much easier than spending hours searching through old files and emails.  

Capture once, reuse as necessary. Structured hiring data supports fair decisions and feeds the reports you need, such as salary data, candidate diversity, time to hire and the most effective sourcing channels. Reach ATS centralises all this evidence for you.  

Built to suit your unique hiring process you can use role-based workflows to keep job descriptions, notes, reasons and approvals at your fingertips. Effortlessly configure our intuitive system to automatically include fields such as salary ranges for jobs in the EU, or alert teams to remove questions about past salary to ensure compliance with varying regional regulations.  

Right to Work checks sit as a tracked step within all workflows, with alerts for incomplete document uploads. Optional diversity insights are collected (with consent) and stored separately to mitigate bias. 

All your sensitive data, secured. With GDPR compliant data storage and purging, all personal and sensitive data remains secure. Our simple-to-integrate software also transfers securely encrypted data and documentation direct to your HR/Payroll systems in seconds, removing the potential for manual error.  

Beyond secure and compliant data capture and storage, you can also use data collected by our smart applicant tracking software to support fairer, more informed, hiring decisions.  

All good ATS systems generate standard reports but Reach ATS goes further. With both standard and custom reporting options, you can report on anything from salary data or candidate diversity to time to hire or the most effective sourcing channels. Hiring teams can generate reports on any data within the system. Empowering data-driven decision-making backed by concrete evidence. 

Reach ATS supports your hiring compliance practices by helping you run a clean, defensible, fully auditable recruitment process that can withstand scrutiny. Keeping your team ready for any changes or tightening of regulations.  

If you’d like to find out how our smart applicant tracking system can help you stay on top of regulations and compliance, then Reach out and book a demo today.  

 Sources:  

• UK Equality Act 2010 recruitment guidance, GOV.UK; who is protected, Acas. GOV.UK

• UK GDPR right of access and SARs, ICO. ICO

• Right to Work checks guidance; 2024 penalty increases. GOV.UK

• Gender Pay Gap Reporting thresholds and duties, GOV.UK. GOV.UK

• EU Pay Transparency Directive overview and deadline. www.hoganlovells.com 

• DBS filtering and lawful checks under ROA and Exceptions Order. GOV.UK+1 

• EU AI Act timing and employer-facing guidance. Digital Strategy