Sick leave entitlements for Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers

Request the RSE Sick Leave feature to be switched on for your business. To do this:

1. Log into your payroll platform.
2. Click the Support button.
   
3. Enter the required details.
4. Click the Send button.
   

Once the RSE Sick Leave feature has been switched on for your company:

1. Log into your payroll platform.
2. Click the Business menu.
3. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
4. Under Advanced, click Advanced Settings.
5. Click the Enable RSE employment checkbox to enable the RSE Sick Leave to be configured.
6. Click the Save button.
   

There are already three system default templates, but you will need to add a new one specifically for your RSE employees:

1. Log into your payroll platform.
2. Click the Business menu.
3. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
4. Under Pay Conditions, click Leave Allowance Templates.
5. Click the Add button.
6. This will open a template for you to configure the various leave types your employees will be entitled to.
7. Do not enter the number of units directly into the RSE Sick Leave category. The units will need to be added to the relevant Leave allowance templates (LAT), so you should just configure it in the LAT itself.
8. Name the template something that makes it easy to identify, like ‘RSE Leave’.
9. Enable the leave categories to be made available to the RSE employees. In the example below, I have enabled Family Violence Leave, Bereavement Leave and RSE Sick Leave. You may also enable Annual Holidays if you want to accrue leave for them as opposed to paying out PAYG 8% each pay run.
10. The next step is to configure the leave you want employees to accrue. For example, if you configure 10 days of Domestic Violence leave and 2 days of RSE Sick Leave, the RSE Sick Leave will accrue 2 days in the employees first pay run and then each month thereafter up to 10 days.
    
11. Click the Save button.

Once your LAT is set up you can assign that template to your RSE employees. To do so, you can:

1. Log into your payroll platform.
2. Click the Employee menu.
3. Click the List submenu.
4. Click the name of the RSE employee you want to assign it to.
5. Under Pay Run Settings, click Leave Allowances.
6. Click the Apply the following leave allowance template field.
   
7. Select the leave allowance template you created in Step 2.
8. Click the Save button.

The employee will receive their first two days entitlement in their first pay run and thereafter in each pay run that contains their monthly anniversary date up until they have accrued ten days i.e. If the employee commenced employment on 06/11/2023 their second entitlement will be accrued in the pay run that 06/12/2023 falls into.

If you are switching on the RSE Sick Leave partway through the year and you need to add previous accruals for the employee (because they have already accrued some sick leave), you will need to manually adjust the first automatic accrual of RSE Sick Leave for that employee to include their previous balance.

When the employee has their first RSE Sick Leave accrual, these are the steps to adjust their opening balance for RSE Sick Leave:

1. Check the employee’s existing Sick Leave Balance up to the pay run.
2. Log into your payroll platform.
3. Select the relevant pay run.
4. Within the pay run, do a manual leave adjustment to reduce the employee’s Sick Leave Balance to 0 (do not apply earnings rules).
5. Click Save.
6. Edit the employee’s automatic RSE accrual (pencil icon next to the accrual) to incorporate their existing Sick Leave balance.

In the example below, RSE Sick Leave initial accrual of two days has been adjusted to add in the four days that the employee had already accrued as Sick Leave. An equivalent leave adjustment to reduce the employee’s Sick Leave balance by four days has also been entered.

If you are re-instating the employee the following year, all you need to do is re-activate the employee with their new start date. The RSE Sick Leave will start again from their new start date and accrue the two days in their first pay run processed after the re-activation and every month thereafter up to the ten days.