The key changes impacting employers and employees in Australia are:

• Entitlement changes from 5 days unpaid to 10 days paid.

• New employees that commence on/after the effective legislation date get 10 days from 1st day of employment – they do not have wait for 12 months anymore.

• Existing employees on the effective legislation date, will have their existing balances reset to 10 days. When their next employment anniversary falls, the balances are required to be reset again to 10 days. 

  This does mean some employees could legitimately access to more than 10 days paid within the first 12 months of the effective legislation date.

• Leave can be taken in any quantity either continuously or not, for example 1 hour here and there or 10 days in one block or any combo in between.

• FDVL supersedes other leave.

  • If employee is on Annual or Sick leave and they need to take FDVL, then the FDVL would replace the other leave.

  • There will be no difference to an employee getting sick whilst on annual leave. This means existing leave requests would need to be replaced/modified. “Other leave payments” may need to be reversed so that the other leave balances and liabilities get credited back what was replaced by FDVL.

• Casual employees can take FDVL outside their rostered hours of work. But the employer is only required to pay FDVL for the days/hours they were rostered. This does not stop the employer from paying generously although they are not required to.

• To reduce risk to an employee's safety when accessing paid family and domestic leave, there are rules about information that must not be included on pay slips. Employers are prohibited from including information that shows:
  • that an amount paid to an employee is a payment for paid family and domestic violence leave.
  • a period of leave taken by an employee has been taken as paid family and domestic violence leave.
  • an employee's paid and domestic voilence leave balance.
• Under STP, FDVL should be reported as Other paid leave (paid leave type O).

The following issues have been raised with Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and Fair Work by Digital Services Providers Australia New Zealand (DSPANZ):

• Clarification on how an employer can validate an employee received their full rate of pay. For example, should it just be the planned work hours that get replaced in payroll or should all pay items be replaced with FDVP using a consolidated rate.

• How the leave is to be reported in single touch payroll (STP) – Safety concerns have been raised in respect to the employee’s MyGov account/annual income statements being accessed with additional value now showing up.How 'part-day' leave is to be calculated – Especially if the employee is also entitled to incentive-based payments such as bonuses, loadings, monetary allowances, overtime or penalty rates and any other separately identifiable amounts.

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