As an employer, you need to understand what leave your employees are entitled to under the National Employment Standards (NES), and what requirements and responsibilities employees have when applying for and taking leave from work.
To make it easy, we created this guide that breaks down the types of employee leave entitlements and their conditions.
Annual leave (also known as holiday pay) is when the employer pays an employee for time taken off work.
Full-time and part-time workers are entitled to 4 weeks of annual leave for every 12 months worked. Leave is based on the employee’s ordinary hours of work and paid at their base pay rate.
A modern award, registered agreement, or employment contract can provide more annual leave (and a different method of payment or entitlement to annual leave loading) but can't offer less than the NES minimum.
Annual leave starts accumulating from an employee’s first day at work and they can take leave as soon as they accumulate it.
There is no maximum or minimum period of annual leave that a worker can take. If any leave isn’t used, it rolls over to the following year.
Casual employees do not get annual leave.
Typically, employers and employees come to an agreement about when they take annual leave and for how long, unless there are requirements for directing, granting, and taking leave in the applicable award or registered agreement.
An employer cannot unreasonably refuse a worker’s annual leave request.
There are 7 national public holidays in Australia: New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday (Easter Friday), Easter Monday, Anzac Day, King's Birthday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
States and territories also have their own additional public holidays, e.g. Western Australia Day, Melbourne Cup Day (Victoria), Picnic Day (Northern Territory).
Holidays that fall on weekends are generally observed on the Monday after the holiday.
Depending on the terms of the modern award, registered agreement or employment contract, employees who work on a public holiday could be entitled to one of the following:
All employees have a right not to work on public holidays; however, employers can ask them to work if the request is reasonable. Employees, in turn, can refuse it if they have their own reasonable grounds.
An employee doesn't get paid for a public holiday if they don't usually work on the day that the public holiday falls on.
Read our article on understanding public holidays and what to pay workers.
Unpaid parental / adoption leave is available to full-time, part-time, and eligible casual employees who, or whose spouse or de facto partner experience the birth of, or adoption of, a child or children.
Under the NES, access to unpaid parental / adoption leave is conditional on an employee being responsible for the care of the child and having completed at least 12 months’ regular, systematic and continuous service with their employer
Employees get 12 months of unpaid parental leave. They can also ask for up to another 12 months of leave.
To be eligible, employees must have worked for an employer for 12 months before the baby is born (or before the date of the adoption) and be responsible for the care of the child. Casual employees are eligible once they have been working for the employer on a regular basis for 12 months and have a reasonable expectation of this regular work continuing.
Any period of unpaid leave which has been taken by an employee (including any period of unpaid special parental leave leading up to the unpaid parental leave period) will not count as continuous service for the purpose of calculating the 12-month qualifying period for access to unpaid parental/adoption leave.
Employees may be entitled to paid parental leave under the federal government’s Parental Leave Pay scheme.
For a child born or adopted before 1 July 2023, parents can get up to 18 weeks pay.
After 1 July 2023, the maximum paid leave will increase depending on when the child was born or adopted, from 20 weeks up to 26 weeks (after 1 July 2026).
To be eligible, employees have to meet work and income tests.
Employees may have other parental leave entitlements under a modern award, registered agreement, their employment contract or company policy.
Full-time and part-time employees can take paid sick or carer’s leave (also known as personal leave). Sick and carer's leave lets an employee take time off to deal with:
Full-time and part-time employees’ yearly entitlement of paid sick or carer’s leave depends on their ordinary hours of work. Full-time employees are entitled to 10 days and any unused sick leave carries over to the following year.
Casual employees and contractors do not get paid sick or carer’s leave but can access unpaid carer’s leave.
Employees need to notify the employer as soon as they can that they intend to take sick leave (even if this is after the leave has started), and should also specify how long they expect to be off work for, if possible.
Employees can also take an extended period of unpaid sick leave. The Fair Work Ombudsman has more information on long periods of sick leave.
You can ask an employee for evidence showing why they were away from work. An award, agreement or your business’s policies might specify when employees need this evidence.
Medical certificates and statutory declarations are examples of acceptable evidence. Evidence doesn’t have to include exact details about the injury or illness.
Our post on managing sick leave has more information for employers.
All employees (including part-time and casual employees) can access 10 days of paid domestic and family violence leave each year.
Employees can access all 10 days as soon as they start work. The entitlement resets on their work anniversary and does not accumulate from year to year.
Employees taking domestic and family violence leave have to let their employer know as soon as possible (even if this is after the leave has started) and should say how long they expect the leave to last.
You can ask the employee for evidence that shows they took the leave to deal with family and domestic violence. The evidence needs to convince a “reasonable person” that the person took the leave to deal with the impacts of family and domestic violence and it’s not practical for them to do so outside work hours.
Employees can take community service leave for paid jury duty or voluntary (unpaid) emergency management activities. An employee is considered to be part of voluntary emergency management if:
There is no limit on the amount of community service leave employees can take. They are entitled to take the leave while they are engaged in the activity and for reasonable travel and rest time.
Employees must let the employer know, as soon as possible, that they intend to take community service leave and should also say how long they expect to be away from work.
You can request that the employee provide evidence that they're entitled to community service leave.
Employees who have spent between 5-10 years with the same company are entitled to paid long service leave that varies from 2 to 3 months, depending on the state or territory:
When an employee ends employment and they have worked the minimum service period, they are entitled to be paid the amount of unused leave entitlement (on a pro-rata basis).
Employees are entitled to 2 days compassionate leave for each instance if:
Employees can take compassionate leave as:
Employees don't accumulate compassionate leave and it's not a part of their sick and carer's leave entitlement. Employees can take compassionate leave any time they need it.
If an employee is already on another type of leave and needs to take compassionate leave, they can use compassionate leave instead of the other leave.
Employees with work-related injuries may be eligible for payments under their employer's workers' compensation schemes.
All employers must have workers compensation insurance for their Australian employees.
Find out more about workers compensation at fairwork.gov.au.
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