Recording Family Violence Leave
Family Violence Leave is a leave entitlement provided under the Holidays Act 2003.
In PaySauce, there is a default leave type available called Family Violence Leave which will give employees the appropriate entitlement (10 days) when they are eligible.
If you have an employee that needs to take Family Violence leave, this is a highly confidential matter and needs to be treated as privately as possible to ensure their privacy and safety. No-one should be able to see this information unless there is an absolute need to know, and depending on the nature of your business and who has access to your payroll, there may be different ways in which you could handle recording and paying Family Violence leave.
If you use the Family Violence leave type that is available by default in PaySauce:
Employees will be able to see and request a leave type called ‘Family Violence Leave’.
When it is approved and paid, the employee’s payslip will just say ‘Leave’ with the date of the entry for Family Violence leave. It will not state the leave type.
Reporting within PaySauce on the employer platform will show that the employee has taken Family Violence Leave, for example in their leave balances and company reports.
In circumstances where you only have a very small number of people able to view the payroll information (business owner or perhaps a payroll administrator) using this leave type may be confidential enough to ensure the employee’s privacy within your company operations.
In employee settings
You can see the Family Violence Leave settings in the employee details by going to:
‘Employees’ on the left hand menu.
Select the ‘settings’ tab.
Click on the ‘leave’ option in the centre menu.
In the pay run
If the employee has not submitted a request, you can add Family Violence Leave to an employee’s pay card in Run a Pay.
Follow the instructions for recording leave in this article.
If the employee has submitted a leave request and you have approved it, you just need to apply it to the pay run as normal.
Other options for recording family violence leave
Where you have a larger business and/or perhaps more people with access to the payroll information, or where your payroll operations may be visible over a bigger number of people, you may need to consider recording the leave for the employee in a different way to preserve the employee’s confidentiality.
For example:
You have multiple payroll administrators and/or multiple people in HR or Finance functions with access to payroll reports
You share payroll reports that show leave types taken with a management team or function
Your employee’s team leader or manager normally approves their leave request but your company policy on Family Violence leave has a different approval mechanism
Your employee doesn’t want this information shared with their manager or team leader who currently has access to their payroll information
Any other situation where the employee’s request for or payment of Family Violence Leave would be able to be seen by others who should not/do not need to know
In these situations we suggest you may want to consider using Special Leave or simply a new payment line.
Using an alternative payment line
Another option for paying the employee in a discreet way while still having the payment distinguishable from other leave types is to create another payment type in their pay card.
While in Run a Pay, click on the employee’s name within their pay card and then click on the payments tab.
You could then set up an hourly payment type on a one off basis with any title you choose. Just remember to tick the box at the bottom that says ‘apply changes to this pay run only’.
Making sure the payment is calculated correctly
Remember that because Family Violence leave is a leave type provisioned under the Holidays Act, payment calculation rules for the day(s) apply and you’ll need to make sure you pay them the correct value.
If you know what your employee would have earned on the day, you need to pay them that amount (relevant daily pay).
If you don’t know what your employee would have earned because their hours or payments are too variable, then you need to pay them their average daily pay. If you are paying the employee through a custom payment method, you still need to ensure that you pay them the correct amount.
If you need to pay your employee an average daily pay for their time off due to family violence but you are creating a custom payment line, you can get the average daily pay by going to the balances tab in the employee’s settings and reviewing the rates that have been calculated already for you.
In summary
Always make sure you preserve employee confidentiality when managing requests for Family Violence Leave.
Refer to your company policy if you have one. If you don’t yet have a policy, you can build yourself a policy here for free.
If you use the Family Violence Leave type within PaySauce it will not show on the employee payslip, but it will appear in reporting within PaySauce.
Other options are available to you when you need to use an alternatively named payment option to preserve employee confidentiality.
Make sure you still account for paying the employee at their average daily pay if you don’t know what they would have earned on the day.