Australian Leave Policy Generator

Having a clear leave policy in place is a good way for your business to avoid ambiguity and confusion around what to do when taking time out. It’s also a good idea to avoid potential conflict and misunderstanding if at all possible.

It’s just common sense for everyone to be on the same page, right?

Bindle to the rescue! We’ve made a free tool to generate leave policies for Australian companies.

With this tool, you simply enter your details, click “Generate” and you’ll get a lovely customised leave policy in the form of a Word document you can then hand out to all your people.

Here’s a screenshot of what to expect…

By default, we reckon it’s compliant with Australian leave laws, like the Fair Work Act of 2009 — a truly riveting read.

Awesome sauce!

For free, you’ll get a leave policy specifying things like:

• How many days annual leave you offer. By default, in Australia the minimum number of days paid annual leave you can provide for your full-time employees is 20 days. This is mandated in the Australian Fair Work Act of 2009. Some employers choose to attract and retain top talent by offering more than the minimum.

  For all full-time and part-time employees, annual leave starts to accumulate a little bit of paid time off every day they work from the day the employee commences work, irrespective of any probation periods, or anything like that.

  Part-time employees accumulate annual leave on a pro-rated basis based on the number of hours they regularly work each week.

  Full-time shift workers are often entitled to 25 days (5 weeks) annual leave per year depending on the applicable award, workplace agreement, or employment contract they have in place.

  Casual workers are not normally entitled to paid time off such as annual, or personal (sick) leave.

• How far in advance employees are required to notify you when they want to request time off.

• Whether or not employees are entitled to take off more time than they’ve earned (i.e. go into the negative with their annual leave balance).

• How many personal (sick) days per year each employee is entitled to. Again, according to the Fair Work Act of 2009, this is a minimum of 10 days each year, and any unused sick leave rolls over from year to year.

  For all full-time and part-time employees, personal leave starts to accumulate a little bit every day they work from the day the employee commences work. Just like annual leave, part-time employees accumulate personal leave on a pro-rated basis based on the number of hours they regularly work each week.

• How and when employees are requested to notify you that they require time off due to illness or to the illness of a family or household member.

• Bereavement Leave. How much paid time-off each employee is entitled to in the event of the death or life threatening illness of an immediate family or household member.

• Your policy on Long Service Leave and the jurisdiction that governs your policy.

• The circumstances under which Parental Leave is granted, when it may be taken, and for how long it can be taken.

• Whether or not you will offer time-off in lieu (TOIL) to employees that are required to work in excess of their normal working hours. The policy also includes a clause about the circumstances under which TOIL will be granted and the maximum amount of TOIL employees can accumulate.

• What happens in the event that one of your employees needs time off in order to perform jury duty and how their rate of pay may be affected.

• A clause outlining the process for requesting time-off for community service for things like volunteer SES, Army Reserve, or CFA work.

All this and more in our free leave policy generator. Once you’ve generated your customised leave policy, you’ll be able to further tweak it to perfectly match how you would like your policy work.

If you’d like to understand a bit more about your obligations as an employer with respect to leave, we recommend taking a look at website of the Australian Fair Work Ombudsman.

They have a brilliant website that presents all the information you’ll need in a clear and concise manner.

Aussie tax dollars at work! Bloody lovely.

We’re pretty keen to hear what you think about this free tool. Please contact us at support@bindle.io with any questions or comments you might have.

We’d love to help!