Automated Sick Leave Evaluation for Casual Employees

Automated Sick Leave Evaluation for Casual Employees

What's Changing

Employment Hero Payroll is introducing Automated Sick Leave Evaluation for Casual Employees for New Zealand businesses. This feature automates the annual eligibility check for sick leave and domestic violence leave entitlements for casual employees, removing the need for payroll admins to manually audit timecards and toggle entitlements each period.

Why This Matters for Your Clients

Under New Zealand employment law, casual employees are entitled to 10 days of paid sick leave and 10 days of domestic violence leave per year, but only once they have been employed for at least 6 months and have worked sufficient hours. Until now, determining eligibility required manual timecard audits every 6 months — a process that was time-consuming, error-prone, and a source of compliance risk for businesses with casual workforces.

What Your Clients Need to Do

This is a one-time setup per employee. After go-live, admins simply assign eligible casual employees to a new dedicated leave allowance template, "Casual - Eligibility Evaluated", and the platform handles the annual eligibility check automatically from that point forward.

• Assign casual employees to the new "Casual - Eligibility Evaluated" leave allowance template.
• The platform evaluates eligibility on each employee's leave anniversary date, checking 6 months of service and hourly thresholds against NZ law requirements.
• If the employee qualifies, 10 days of sick leave and 10 days of domestic violence leave are granted automatically for both types in one evaluation.
• If they don't qualify, the existing leave balance is preserved, and a record is created in their leave history explaining the outcome.
• Employees on existing templates are completely unaffected. No changes to current configurations are required.
  
  

Action Required After Go-Live

Admins at businesses with casual employees will need to assign those employees to the new "Casual - Eligibility Evaluated" template to opt into automated evaluation. We recommend reviewing the KBA here so your team can help clients with this setup.

If you have any questions about this feature ahead of go-live, please reach out to your Partner Success Manager.