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.

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 my HR platform?

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.

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.

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.

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.