If you choose to reduce the number of work hours for some of the employees and decide to adjust the leave accrue accordingly, here are some of important notes and steps to help you along the way.
Understand the difference between standard and work-time leave type
Standard Leave Type
This is the default leave type to use for all salaried employees. For a salaried employees, during a normal circumstance, they will be accrued a certain number of leave hours as long as they are in the payrun.In the following example, even you reduce the number of paid hour to 0, the accrued leave hour is still 20 days per year (work out to 0.0767 per work hour if that employee works 38 hours per week)
Work-time Leave Type
The is the default leave type to use for all wages employees. The accrued leave hour will only calculated by their work hour.
The following example is showing what happen if the employee did not work for the pay period, he/she will not accrued any leave hour.
How to temporarily reduce the leave accrue in case the work hours is reduced?
In normal circumstance, reducing the work hour of salaried employees will be against FairWork rule. However, with the current crisis, FairWork has relaxed some rules regarding JobKeeper scheme. More information can be found here: https://coronavirus.fairwork.gov.au/coronavirus-and-australian-workplace-laws/flexibility-in-workplace-laws-during-coronavirus/jobkeeper-changes-to-the-fair-work-act.
If you choose to reduce the work hour of your employees and wish to reduce their accrued leave hours during the time, here are the process to help you to achieve just that:
What should I do if my employees are back to standard work hour?
What should I do if I decide to terminate my employees while they are working with reduced hours?