Sick Leave
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- Last Updated: Saturday, 25 August 2018 15:19
Under the Holidays Act each employee is allowed 5 days paid leave per year while sick or absent for family sickness or for ACC top-up.
It becomes a right for the employee, only after six months employment and then for every completed year on that anniversary.
It accrues 5 days on each anniversary to a maximum of 20 days.
These are all minimums. An employer can make the sick leave available immediately if desired. An employer can also grant sick leave in advance, in which case the days taken just come off the next 5 days when it is due.
N.B. The Holidays Act does not specify, or even mention, the amount of time a day represents other than relevant daily pay. It can therefore NEVER be measured in hours - just in days and the same number for everyone regardless of working time. For example, an employee working 2 hours every Monday can take five Mondays a year as sick pay and be paid for 2 hours each day taken. If 5 days meant 40 hours, then that same employee could take 20 Mondays as sick and be absent for 20 weeks of the year! If that same employee, on one particular Monday, was scheduled to work and be paid for a whole 8 hour day, (say while on a training course) and was sick on that day, they would be entitled to 8 hours pay and would be deducted 1 day of sick leave.
This why payment is to be made at the RDP rate. Most employees are simply going to be paid at their ordinary rate for the time they would normally (or otherwise) have worked on that day. In some cases though, it is difficult or impossible to determine what that time would have been, and then the ADP calculation method can apply.
See the RDP FAQ.
The ADP is average daily earnings, which is similar to the annual leave rate, but based on their number of paid days in the year regardless of time worked on those days. By dividing the daily rate by the ordinary pay rate, KeyPay determines the number of hours to be entered to pay the employee an average day's pay.