EMPLOYEE LEAVE
Australian employees have a broad range of leave entitlements, including annual leave, personal/carer’s leave, unpaid carer's leave, compassionate leave, community service leave, unpaid/paid parental leave (includes maternity, paternity and adoption leave) long service leave and defence force service leave, all of which are basic entitlements that are available to all employees who qualify for them.
Other forms of leave that employers commonly provide to employees include study leave, emergency/ community service leave, jury service leave, cultural/ceremonial leave and leave without pay. Annual leave and personal/carer’s leave form the bulk of leave taken by employees, with other types of leave being taken based on more individual circumstances.
Browse through the below documents to learn more about employee leave.
You need policies to set out your ‘rules’ and expectations around leave in your workplace. As there is so much variety in employees’ individual circumstances, it is vitally important that you have a leave policy which sets out employees’ entitlements to a range of leave, as well as whether these entitlements differ for certain types of employees, for example, day workers and shift workers; award/ agreement employees and award/agreement free employees.
Inevitably, your employees will get around to taking some leave. This is where the Forms on Workplace come in handy. Either print these out to use offline, or fill them out online and attach to your employee's file. While the Leave Form is pretty self-explanatory, we also have forms which are used to meet more specific legal requirements.
A complex and newly developing area of law is the ability of new parents to request flexible working arrangements in order to care for their child. If not handled correctly, this can lead to legal claims such as underpayment, breach of award/agreement, discrimination, adverse action, breach of contract, and unfair dismissal.