Answer
A recent federal law now requires employers to provide Paid Family and Domestic Violence leave, which amounts to 10 days in a 12-month period. You can read more about this legislation here.
The new leave entitlement will be available from:
- 1 February 2023, for employees of non-small business employers (employers with 15 or more employees on 1 February 2023).
- 1 August 2023, for employees of small business employer (employers with less than 15 employees on 1 February 2023).
This leave renews every year on each employee’s work anniversary, and does not accumulate from year to year if it isn’t used.
According to Fair Work regulations, there are specific guidelines that dictate the reporting of information on pay slips, including what should not be disclosed. These rules are designed to minimize the potential risk to employees' safety while taking advantage of paid family and domestic violence leave:
“Employers need to keep a record of leave balances and any leave taken by employees. However, pay slips must not mention paid family and domestic violence leave, including any leave taken and leave balances.
From 4 February 2023, an amount paid to an employee for taking paid family and domestic violence leave has to be recorded on a pay slip as:
- ordinary hours of work, or
- another kind of payment for performing work, such as an allowance, bonus or overtime payment.
However, if an employee requests it, their employer can record time taken as paid family and domestic violence leave as another type of leave on their pay slip (for example, annual leave).
If an employee has taken a period of paid family and domestic violence leave, it is best practice for their employer to record this on their pay slip in a way that makes the pay slip look as close as possible to how it would have looked if the employee had not taken the leave.”
If your employee has opted to utilize a leave type, instead of having it displayed as outlined earlier, you can use these steps to configure it. This new leave type does not have a special STP Phase 2 code, and therefore will need to be set up as a custom leave type:
- Navigate to Company >> Leave Balance and press the green plus symbol to create a new company leave balance.
- Set a name for the company leave balance; the name must not mention family and domestic violence, as such wording cannot show on employee payslips. We suggest using the name ‘Special Leave’ for this leave type.
- Make sure both the Default Amount and Leave Loading amount is set to 0, and tick No Balance/Accrual Required. Leave all other boxes unticked. After this, press Save.
- Next, navigate to Employees >> Leave >> Custom Leave Accrual and press the green plus symbol to add this leave type to each employee who needs it. Select the ‘Special Leave’ that you just created from the dropdown list, then press Save.
This employee now has the new leave type set up, which will not accrue any balance. If an employee needs to use this new leave type, this can be taken like other leave in the program, via Pays >> Edit Pay >> Leave Taken In This Pay >> Special Leave type selected.
Please be aware that you'll need to manually monitor the DV leave taken by your employees. To keep a record, you can add to the employees' notes found under Employees >> Details >> Notes. Additionally, to view the total DV leave taken during the year, you can use the Leave Taken report in the Reports tab and include 'Custom Leave' in your criteria.