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Employment lawyers have said that the government’s consultation on reforms to zero-hours contracts and agency worker protections could provide the clearest indication yet of how an Andy Burnham-led government may approach employment law and labour market regulation.

The comments come in the wake of Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election. The Greater Manchester mayor is widely expected to challenge Sir Keir Starmer over the leadership of the Labour party.

According to employment specialists at Constantine Law, a Burnham-led government may signal a more “interventionist” approach to workplace regulation than Starmer. However, this is countered by the fact that he has sought out advice from Andy Haldane, a former Bank of England chief economist; Richard Hughes, a former chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility; and Jim O’Neill, a crossbench peer and former Treasury minister who worked on George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse.

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Constantine Law argues that one of the key challenges facing any future administration would be balancing Labour’s commitment to strengthening workers’ rights with the need to promote economic growth and preserve the flexibility that has long characterised the UK labour market.

It said the most consequential reforms may be around zero hours, which are under consultation until 25 August.

This includes proposals that could reshape workforce flexibility across a range of sectors, including healthcare, retail, hospitality, logistics, and agriculture, including agency work.

The decisions taken on zero-hours reform will tell employers a great deal about the direction of travel under any future Burnham administration” – John Hayes, Constantine Law

John Hayes, managing partner at Constantine Law, said the consultation represented an important test of the government’s policy direction.

“The decisions taken on zero-hours reform will tell employers a great deal about the direction of travel under any future Burnham administration,” he said. “The consultation presents a series of choices that could either preserve labour market flexibility or impose substantial new obligations on employers.”

Issues under consideration include the length of reference periods used to calculate guaranteed hours, eligibility criteria for guaranteed-hours offers, minimum notice periods for shifts, and compensation arrangements when shifts are cancelled or changed at short notice.

Hayes argued that labour market flexibility has historically been one of the UK’s economic strengths, helping to maintain lower levels of youth unemployment than many European countries.

He added that concerns about rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) highlighted the importance of maintaining routes into work.

“The interests of employers and workers are often more aligned than political debates suggest,” Hayes said. “Policymakers must be careful not to undermine those opportunities.”

The government says the zero-hours reforms will end one-sided flexibility and help people plan their finances and daily lives. Those who enjoy the benefits of zero-hour work may keep their existing contracts if they wish.

Ministers maintain that the reforms would help save workers in some of the most deprived areas up to £600 in lost income from the hidden costs of insecure work.

Business secretary Peter Kyle said: “It’s not right that people can work regular hours but still have no certainty about their pay from week to week. These vital changes will mean more certainty for millions of people and will save the lowest-paid workers hundreds of pounds.”

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Royal Mail has 6,500 postal workers off sick every day, out of a total of about 130,000 employees, its chief executive has warned.

Martin Seidenberg, the chief executive of International Distribution Services (IDS), the Royal Mail owner, told The Times CEO Summit that the business wanted to be at the “vanguard” of efforts to tackle the nation’s economic inactivity problems. The absences at the Royal Mail cost the organisation £200 million a year, he said.

“It has a cost to us, and of course an impact to you, to society, because of the quality that we can deliver or not deliver,” Seidenberg said, adding that was “super important for us to fix”.

In response to its issues with sickness absence, IDS has given all of its 130,000 staff 24-hour access to an online GP.

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“We’ve been very surprised how heavily this is being used,” Seidenberg said. “We like it, because quite frankly, we believe that the sooner we can take care of our people and they have access to medical support, the sooner they’re likely to return to the job.”

Seidenberg also warned that the UK’s education system was failing to equip children with the technology skills needed when they move into work.

He spoke alongside Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former chairman of John Lewis who led the government’s Keep Britain Working review. Mayfield said it was no surprise that school leavers were generally unprepared for employment because “we’ve created a system where education and employment have never been more separate”.

In addition to what is being taught in the classroom, Mayfield pointed to work experience as an example of how the UK was failing to ready young people for their careers. “People basically don’t do work experience anymore [because] we’ve made it so difficult for people to do it,” he said. He gave an example of a plumber who might be open to having a young person still at school shadow him for a few hours, but cannot because he does not have employers’ liability insurance. “It’s madness and yet it is also fixable. We need to sort out the whole pathways into work.”

One of the traditional ways from school to work is apprenticeships – paid jobs that allow young people to work and gain hands-on experience, while also studying for a formal qualification.

“The easiest and most valuable person to recruit is the one you’ve already got in the business,” Mayfield said. “There are very few opportunities to drive growth that actually benefit employers, benefit individuals, save on welfare, don’t cost a tonne of money and don’t have to take a long time, and these are all right in front of us.”

Also speaking at the summit was Jennie Daly, the chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey. She told delegates that many employers in the construction industry had scaled back their apprenticeship programmes in response to higher employment costs.

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