Personal leave on Payslips

[qanda8]

We are transferring to a new payroll system. Currently our payslips show Annual, LSL and personal leave accruals. We are considering removing Personal leave accrual from payslips and we think this may be encouraging some employees to use their full personal leave accrual each year (ie take sick days).
Does anyone see any issues with this approach?

[Qld IR Consultant]

Nope. As long as the system, and subsequent hard copy pay slips, adhere to the minimum provisions of the Act then your fine......

[Moz]

I have never seen accrued balances on a pay slip for annual leave, LSL or personal leave!

However I believe both employees and their managers should be able to easily access this information.

[Greg Schmidt]

The leave balances don't have to be shown on the payslip. But the accrued leave is an entitlement of the employee, and they are allowed to use if they have a legitimate need. So Moz is right - the leave balances do need to be readily available to the employee, they can't be kept secret. The advantage of having the balances printed on the payslip is that HR staff don't have to spend time providing the same info by phone or email.

[qanda8]

Thanks Greg. Good point.

[ER-Enthusiast]

I have never worked anywhere where AL has not been on the payslip! Some places personal leave has also been there and others LSL in stead.

Interesting Moz!

Agreeing with Greg, the leave is accrued, no more is it the case of an employee has to wait 12 months until they can take a holiday (let's face it many employees don't even last that long)

[astina31]

With the personal leave being printed on the payslip...we use MYOB and it prints the personal leave on the payslip which means that every time one of my workers accrues a sick day he takes it. He gets paid on a Wed and has a a Thursday off....average of one day every 5 weeks. Awesome

[Greg Schmidt]

Astina,

Many (most?) employers would have a policy allowing employees to take a single day of personal leave without providing a medical certificate or other evidence. But section 107 allows the employer to require the employee to provide evidence that would satisfy a reasonable person that ... [the leave is taken for a legitimate purpose].

My point is that the pattern of leave usage by this employee may prompt a reasonable person to question the validity of his personal leave usage. So there may be grounds to depart from the usual policy and impose a requirement on this employee to provide evidence to substantiate every single day of personal leave usage from that point forward.

[astina31]

Hi Greg,

Thankfully this employee resigned (see my other posts) and is still causing me grief. On the other end of the spectrum my other employee has not had a sick day in 25 years. His last sick was when "his father died". I told him thats compassionate leave, he's such a love, he's a model employee.