Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave

The Australian Government has passed legislation providing for up to 10 days of paid leave within any 12 month period for employees that are victims of family and domestic violence.

This includes all employees whether full time, part-time or casual.

This leave is additional leave and does not come from any pre-existing leave types such as Personal/Sick Leave or Annual Leave.

It replaces the 5 days of unpaid leave that employees were entitled to previously.

The legislation takes effect from 1st February 2023 for employers with 15 or more employees, and from 1st August 2023 for employers with less than 15 employees.

To view the Fair Work Amendment please refer to https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2023L00082.

To learn more about the changes, please refer to the web pages published by Fair Work Ombudsman about Family & domestic violence leave and New paid family and domestic violence leave.

Key Points

For the protection of the victim, the relevant changes to the Fair Work Legislation Amendment Regulations 2022 emphasize that the following information must NOT be included on a pay advice:

• Information that an amount paid to an employee is a payment in respect of the employee’s entitlement to paid family and domestic violence leave; and
• Information that a period of leave taken by the employee has been taken as a period of paid family and domestic violence leave; and
• The balance of an employee’s entitlement to paid family and domestic violence leave.

Employees are entitled to the 10 days PFDVL as at the legislation date, they do not need to wait for 12 months to elapse or for their employment date anniversary.

On an employee's anniversary date each year, their PFDVL entitlement must be reset to 10 days.

PFDVL can be taken in any quantity whether continuous or not. For example 1 or 2 hours at a time, up to 10 days in one block, or a combination of part days and full days up to the 10 day limit.

PFDVL supersedes other leave types.

If an employee is on Personal, Annual or Long Service Leave when they claim PFDVL, you will need to reverse the leave entries paid for those leave types and replace them with the PFDVL payments so that their other leave balances are not impacted by periods of PFDVL .

Learn more at Paid family and domestic violence leave for small business.

From there you can access the ombudsman's updated website information and education resources, including their updated small business employer guide.

They also have Family and domestic violence leave — case studies to help small businesses understand the new entitlement in practice.

How to process PFDVL on a Payrun

Family and domestic violence leave is to be reported as, for example, ordinary time worked, overtime or allowances, or training, rather than as a type of leave such as ‘miscellaneous’ or ‘other’ leave.

When an employee takes FDVL the pay records and pay advice is to be processed as if it was a normal day with the employee being paid the same hours and allowances etc that they would have been paid had they not claimed PFDVL.

These amounts are reported the same as normal for STP purposes and have the same Superannuation applied as if the employee had worked.

Any recording of the fact that FDVL was taken must be a separate record or done in a separate undisclosed category in the payroll software.

When processing PFDVL payments in Marlin HR, you will use the same Earnings Types or Allowance Types that you would have used to pay the employee had they worked.

Typically, this will be Standard Hours plus any overtime that the employee would have worked (e.g. Time & Half, Double Time).

Tracking PFDVL Balances

This legislation is very new.

However, it is clear that this new leave is different to other leave types in the following ways:

• PFDVL payments must use the same earnings types that the employee would have been paid had they not claimed PFDVL;
• PFDVL payments must not be identified on pay advices in any way;
• PDFVL accrues differently to other leave types (i.e. is reset to 10 days on each anniversary but does not exceed 10 days).

For these reasons, it is NOT appropriate to create a leave type for PFDVL to track the balance or make payments. We recommend tracking PFDVL in Employee Maintenance using the procedure below.

Set up a Notes Type for PFDVL

First you will create a new Notes Type that can be used for all employees.

From the menu, select System > Notes Types.

Click on the Add icon (green +) to add a new Notes type.

Enter a Notes Type Name of PFDVL and then click on the Add button further down the page.

Enter text as follows and then click on the OK button.

Click on the Save icon.

Entering PFDVL payments on an Employee

Each time you make PFDVL to an employee you will record the details on the new PFDVL tab in Employee Maintenance.

Open the employee in Employee Maintenance and click on the Notes tab at the top.

Click on the new PFDVL tab.

Click on the Add button at the bottom to pop up a new Note.

Click on the Add Std Note button at the bottom, select PFDVL Payment and click on the OK button.

Your standard note details will be pre-entered and you can change the Note Date if necessary and enter the details in the bottom section.

Click on the OK button to save the entry.

This will not automatically tally the PFDVL days taken or remaining but it will enable you to quickly check how much PFDVL the employee has taken since their last anniversary date.