With the holiday season almost upon us, now is the time for employers to ensure they are complying with the new rules that were introduced this year around Christmas shutdowns.<\/p>\n
According to the Fair Work Ombudsman, a \u2018shutdown\u2019 or \u2018close down\u2019 is when a business temporarily closes during a specific period. The reasons may be that it is not viable for the business to operate during this period because it may be a quiet time, or many staff are away on leave.<\/p>\n
Whilst your Bookkeeper should already be across the relevant awards for the employees, Business Owners need to understand the specific conditions that apply to a shutdown, such as during the Christmas break. The conditions can vary for each award, industry, and state. This will impact leave entitlements and other contributing factors.<\/p>\n
Should the employees be covered by a registered agreement, then check the terms that relate to a shutdown and\/or the Christmas break. To find a registered agreement, go to the Fair\u00a0Work Ombudsman<\/a> website.<\/p>\n Many awards were updated in May 2023 regarding rules on taking annual leave during a shutdown.\u00a0 To find out if\/how you are affected you can find out HERE<\/a><\/p>\n The new rules outlined the following:<\/p>\n An employee who doesn\u2019t have enough paid annual leave to cover the whole period can form an agreement with their employer in writing<\/strong> for other options for the days not covered, such as:<\/p>\n All full-time and part-time employees must be paid during this period. It is to be treated as leave. Casuals are not paid during this time, given that no work is undertaken. Depending on the type of Award or Agreement, it may or may not outline if an employee can be advised that they \u201cmust take leave\u201d during the shutdown. The Award might indicate that the employer may request the employee take leave.<\/p>\n All employees receive their base pay for hours worked on a public holiday. The varying entitlements are included in the Awards or Agreements for every employee, including how public holidays will impact the employee\u2019s pay.<\/p>\n Some of the entitlements that need to be considered:<\/p>\n Employees cannot be forced to work on a public holiday<\/em><\/strong>. However, an employer can make this request if it is reasonable to the type of employment. Equally, the employee may refuse to do so when the refusal is based on reasonable grounds.<\/p>\n To understand what is deemed \u2018reasonable\u2019:<\/p>\n The collective circumstances of the employee need to be considered prior to requesting they work on a public holiday.<\/p>\n With the exception of casual employees, employees who would normally work on the specific day that the public holiday has occurred are to be paid their usual base rate in conjunction with their ordinary hours that they would have worked.<\/p>\n The base rate does not include:<\/p>\n Please note that it is unacceptable to change an employee\u2019s day of work to avoid making this payment.<\/em><\/p>\n Our Top Employer Considerations for this Holiday Season<\/strong><\/p>\n Give your Bookkeeper enough time to prepare the pay run, as often, in preparation for an annual shutdown, processing the pay run will take longer than usual.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the holiday season almost upon us, now is the time for employers to ensure they are complying with the new rules that were introduced this year around Christmas shutdowns. According to the Fair Work Ombudsman, a \u2018shutdown\u2019 or \u2018close down\u2019 is when a business temporarily closes during a specific period. The reasons may be … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[109,82,78,75,81],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/app\/uploads\/download.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10501"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10524,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501\/revisions\/10524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookwiz.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
If Working on Public Holidays<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
\n
If Not Working on Public Holidays<\/h3>\n
\n
\n