The Unpaid Pandemic Leave Taken pay category has been updated and counts as service for entitlements under awards and the National Employment Standards - see the below from Fair Work:
Unpaid pandemic leave in awards
If any staff have used this pay category previously, you may need to adjust their Annual, Personal and Long Service Leave balances for any period of unpaid pandemic leave previously taken.
This article provides instructions on how to calculate and apply any missing leave accrual.
Note: if leave accrual settings were overridden or the 'accrues leave' checkbox was manually ticked at any time this article may not apply. However, we strongly suggest you follow at least the first section 'Determining potentially affected employees' to ensure you have not missed any leave accrual obligations.
Determining potentially affected employees
To determine which employees have been affected, run the Leave History Report and filter it to Unpaid Pandemic Leave. Ensure you set the date range to cover all Unpaid Pandemic Leave that may have been taken since it was introduced:
The report will indicate all of the employees who have taken Unpaid Pandemic Leave and will provide a link to the corresponding pay run. Note that if the leave taken is showing due to 'Leave accrual cap reached for the leave year', you will not be required to calculate accrual on this as this is simply the leave category's balance resetting at the end of their leave year.
From within the pay run, compare the number of hours worked (or leave units taken) with the leave accrual figures. This step is necessary to determine if leave accrued correctly in the past or if you are, in fact, missing leave accruals. Keep note of how many hours/units have not accrued leave.
In the below example, there is nothing listed under Leave Accrued so you would need to calculate the full accrual amount for the 38 hours of leave taken:
Calculating the Missing Accrual amount
Unpaid Pandemic Leave taken will affect Annual, Personal and LSL balances so the below process will need to be repeated for each leave type:
Using the Leave Accrual Calculator (found in the leave category settings) as a guide, determine the applicable leave accrual rate, e.g. for Annual leave accrues at 0.076923 units per hour of leave taken. 38 hours of leave taken equates to 2.92308 units of missing leave accrual.
NB Bulk calculations can be done using Excel if need be.
Repeat this process to obtain the missing leave accrual units for all employees and leave types mentioned above.
Applying the Leave Accrual
To enter the missing leave accrual complete the below steps:
- Create an empty ad hoc pay run and manually add the affected employees;
- Delete any earnings lines or leave accrual that may be automatically created;
- For each employee select Actions > Accrue Leave, choose the applicable leave category from the drop-down list and enter the missing units:
Once you have successfully entered the missing leave accrual units for each employee and leave type, you can finalise the pay run as normal.
There is no obligation to lodge this pay run with the ATO.