All employees will soon have the entitlement to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave each year. The change comes in effective from the 1st February 2023, for non-small business employers with more than 15 employees. For small business employers with less than 15 employees, the effective date will be the 1st August 2023. The ten days will be available upfront for full time, part-time, and casual employees; it is not pro-rated for part-time and casual employees, nor does it accumulate from year to year.
As part of Fair Work's ruling, to make sure employees are not financially disadvantaged an employee must be paid their full pay rate; this includes their base rate plus any incentive-based payments and bonuses, loadings, monetary allowances, overtime or penalty rates, and any other separately identifiable amount.
Important
The below article covers our 1st of Febuary update to Domestic Violence leave; for the content covering the 4th of June update, please refer to this article.
Glossary
- Platform Updates
- Non-small businesses (with more than 15 employees) from the 1st February 2023
- Small businesses (with under 15 employees)
- Do I need to sync anything to Employment Hero?
Platform updates
Effective from the 30th January 2023, a new platform leave category, pay category and work type will be available to both new and existing clients. The new paid leave category does not replace the existing unpaid leave category.
Helpful Hint
We advise against deleting or replacing the existing unpaid leave category as it would be important to keep it for auditing and reporting purposes. For all new businesses created after the 1st February 2023 and before the 1st August 2023, we will make both family and domestic violence leave categories available on default (paid and unpaid). Individual businesses can refer to the instructions below depending on the number of employees they have
To reduce the risk to an employee’s safety when accessing paid family and domestic violence leave, there are new rules around the information you must not include on an employee’s pay slip. Considering the advice from Fair Work, the display of the pay category when taking paid family and domestic violence leave would appear on pay slips as Leave - Other as well as leave accrual and balances will be hidden from the employee’s pay slip.
Additionally, your employees still have an entitlement to 5 days of unpaid family and domestic violence leave. You would keep this in place until they can access the new entitlement of ten days of paid family and domestic violence leave.
Non-small businesses (with more than 15 employees) from the 1st February 2023
Update leave balances
You do not need to give the initial balance of ten days of paid family and domestic violence leave to employees on the 1st of February. The first pay run created from the 31st January 2023, will automatically give all active employees regardless if the employee has earnings or not, the initial balance. The balance will then renew as per the employee’s leave year on their anniversary date.
Payroll admins can create an adhoc pay run or action the following in your usual pay run to transition the employee’s entitlement to the new paid leave. You would do this by zeroing out the balance of the existing Family and Domestic Violence Leave.
Helpful Hint
You can utilise this new feature to make bulk adjustments to leave balances in the pay run. Please make sure that you check the existing and final balance of employees before making the leave adjustment and finalising the pay run.
Update leave category and leave allowance template settings
Leave allowance templates
We will update all award leave allowance templates to disable the existing unpaid leave category. You will need to action an award update for the new settings to be available.
Custom/default or no leave allowance templates
For custom or default leave allowance templates, you will need to disable the existing unpaid leave category manually. For employees not assigned to any leave allowance templates, you will also need to update the individual leave category settings for each impacted employee.
We also advise to zero out the accrual of the unpaid family and domestic violence leave category to avoid unnecessary accrual of this leave type.
Update work type settings
Customers will need to disable the old (Unpaid) Family Domestic Violence work type and then enable the new Paid Domestic Violence Work Type. The idea behind disabling the old work type is so that end users can not see this option when submitting timesheets and leave requests. We have included a screenshot of us disabling the old option for end users below for you.
Small businesses (with under 15 employees)
Per Fair Work guidelines, for small businesses with less than 15 employees on the 1st of February 2023, the new paid leave entitlement does not need to come into effect until the 1st of August 2023. Should your business grow to larger than 15 employees between 1st February 2023 and 1st August 2023, you do not need to offer Paid Family and Domestic Violence leave until 1st August 2023. Should your business choose to voluntarily provide the new paid leave entitlement earlier than the expected date, please refer to the section above.
Update leave balances
The first pay run created from the 31st January 2023, will automatically give all active employees, regardless of whether the employee has earnings or not, the initial balance. As your employees do not have the entitlement to this balance yet, you need to create an adhoc pay run, or action the following in your usual pay run to zero out the balance of the paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave.
Helpful Hint
You can utilise this new feature to make bulk adjustments to leave balances in the pay run Please make sure that you check the existing and final balance of employees before making the leave adjustment and finalising the pay run.
Update leave category and leave allowance template settings
Award leave allowance templates
We will update all award leave allowance templates to disable the existing unpaid leave category. Once you action the award update, you will need to customise the award leave allowance templates to revert these settings, including:
- Disabling the new paid leave category.
- Enabling the existing unpaid leave category.
- Zeroing out the accrual of the paid leave category (until it comes into effect).
Custom/default or no leave allowance
For custom/default leave allowance templates or employees not assigned to any leave allowance templates, you will need to customise and update the settings, including:
- Disabling the new paid leave category.
- Enabling the existing unpaid leave category.
- Zeroing out the accrual of the paid leave category (until it comes into effect).
Update work type settings
Customers will need to disable the old (Unpaid) Family Domestic Violence work type and then enable the new Paid Domestic Violence Work Type. The idea behind disabling the old work type is so that end users can not see this option when submitting timesheets and leave requests. We have included a screenshot of us disabling the old option for end users below for you.
Do I need to sync anything to my HR platform?
Yes, as you are updating and applying new pay categories and new leave categories, you will need to sync these changes over to your organisations HR platform. You can refer to the following articles on how to undertake this update:
- Manage my organisation's leave categories on Employment Hero
- Update my organisation's pay categories on Employment Hero
Explore related content
- Automate your time in lieu (TIL) calculations Learn about the several scenarios where you can automate the calculation used to accrue and take time in lieu.
- Paid family and domestic violence leave 4th June 2023 on Payroll classic Find out what paid family and domestic violence leave changes that occurred on the 4th June 2023.