This describes the new Employment Leave Bill, not the rules that apply today. This comes into force on 6th August 2028. Until it comes into force, the current Holidays Act 2003 still governs all leave (see our current leave articles).
In short: Giving each employee a pay statement every pay period will become a legal requirement. Today there is no such obligation unless an employee asks for their information.
How this will differ from now
Under the current rules, there is no legal requirement to provide employees with pay statements (payslips). Unless an employee raises a request for information about their pay and leave from their records, the employer does not have to provide it.
Under the new system employers will be required, under the Employment Relations Act, to provide a pay statement to each employee for every pay period, whether or not the employee asks.
What a pay statement will need to include
The Bill will set out a subset of the information from an employee's records that a pay statement must specify. Based on these documents, that subset will include information about:
the payments made to the employee;
the deductions made;
employer contributions; and
leave entitlements.
On top of that, the Leave Compensation Payment (LCP) will have to be identified as a distinct component of pay, shown separately in both the employee's records and their pay statements. So where an employee has been paid the LCP on casual or additional hours, it will need to appear as its own line rather than being rolled into other pay. This is the same obligation that currently exists for 8% PAYG holiday pay.
How a pay statement can be provided
The Bill will give employers flexibility on the format. A pay statement will be able to be provided directly in physical form, provided in digital form, or made accessible to employees through an online portal. In other words, there will not be a single prescribed method, as long as the employee gets the required information each pay period.
Family Violence Leave must not appear
There is one firm restriction: information related to family violence leave must not be included in a pay statement.
This is an important safety point, so a pay statement will need to be set up so that family violence leave does not surface on it, even though it will still be recorded elsewhere in the employee's records.
This is the same as how PaySauce already reports Family Violence leave on payslips - it is simply recorded as 'Leave'.