The Government has made changes to employment legislation including sick and bereavement leave.
The changes to the law will take effect even if employees do not sign a new agreement.
The changes mean that, as best practice, employers should update their employment agreements. This has the benefit of avoiding any confusion for your employees. If you have not updated your employment agreements since 2019, now would be a good time to do so. We have also taken this opportunity to make some minor amendments to the employment agreement template – most of the changes simply clarify existing terms. Existing employees should be advised of the new leave entitlements and be offered an employment agreement that reflects the law. All other existing terms of employment (location; hours; position; wages etc.) will remain the same.
Below are some of the more important updates:
Sick leave:
The changes take effect from 24 July 2021.
An employee’s sick leave entitlement per annum increases from 5 to 10 days’ sick leave per 12-month period. The number of unused sick leave that may be carried over every 12 months has been reduced from 15 to 10 days per year. The maximum entitlement to sick leave at any one time remains the same at 20 days.
For existing employees, the sick leave entitlement will increase to 10 days when they next become entitled to sick leave for a 12-month period.
Please note that a part-time employee has a greater proportion of sick leave than a full-time employee. For example, an employee that works 5 days a week, who previously would have received a minimum of 5 days sick leave per 12 months, will have his or her entitlement increased to 10 days per year. This is a total of 2 working weeks a year. In contrast, a part time employee who works, for example, 1 day a week, who currently gets a minimum of 5 days sick leave a year, will have his or her entitlement increased to 10 days per year. This would amount to a total of 10 working weeks of sick leave per year.
Bereavement leave
From 31 March 2021, employees who experience a miscarriage or stillbirth, their partner, or people planning to have a child through surrogacy, adoption or whangai arrangement became eligible for 3 days’ bereavement leave if the pregnancy ends by miscarriage or stillbirth. Bereavement leave is not available where a pregnancy is terminated. You are able to request, but cannot require, proof of the miscarriage or stillbirth.
Privacy Act 2020
The new Privacy Act came into force on 1 December 2020. The new legislation introduced a ‘information privacy principle’ relating to cross-border disclosures of information. Where personal information is sent and stored overseas by your business, you will be responsible for ensuring any personal information disclosed overseas will be adequately protected. While the regularity of this may be rare, we have inserted a brief clause about personal information to make it clear that you are entitled to collect and deal (so far as the law allows) with employee’s personal information. Further information about the Privacy Act can be found at the Privacy Commissioner’s website.
You will need to inform all employees of the changes to sick leave and bereavement leave entitlement. You will also need to ensure that your payroll systems are updated to account for the increased sick leave entitlement.
Your employment agreements should, as a matter of best practice, be updated to reflect the increased entitlement. Any policies which expressly refer to the statutory minimum sick leave entitlement will need to be amended. If you do not update their employment agreements, the increased entitlement still applies as a matter of law.
Employees should be encouraged to read the whole agreement carefully, take advice if they wish, and ask any questions that they may have.
Please click here for a proposed communication and update that you can use for your employees on the change in entitlement to sick leave and bereavement leave. – This is a member-only resource and you will need to be logged in to view.