Planned Changes to Leave Entitlements

The Government has accepted the Holidays Act Taskforce’s recommendations to make the Holidays Act clearer and provide more certainty for employers and employees.

The changes that increase access to some leave entitlements are:

Sick leave – looks like the bill may pass mid 2021 where leave will extend from five days to 10 days per year. Worker's will be eligible for one day's sick leave from their first day of employment, with an additional day per month for six months, then after six months it will flick over to 10 days per 12 month period. Maximum accrual of 20 days. Currently, this is what the changes are looking like.

Bereavement leave – extension of the bereavement leave is looking to cover the wider family and will include death of step family, siblings in-law and children in-law, some family groups such as whangai relationships, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. Bereavement Leave will be available from day one of employment - more details to come on this. The law change passed in parliament (24/03/2021) allows an employee to take up to three days' paid bereavement leave if they or their partner experience a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Domestic Violence Leave – allowing employees to take domestic violence leave from first day of employment.

Parental leave - the parental leave override will be removed, meaning that employees returning from parental leave will be paid at their full rate for all their annual holidays

Payslip's will be required for each pay period, detailing used and remaining leave entitlements and how these are calculated.

Once these changes come into effect, we will update our online Employment Contracts, watch this space.