Are you across the changes to Parental Leave entitlements?
The Fair Work Act has been amended to include new unpaid parental leave entitlements.
These include:
- entitlements for parents who experience traumatic events such as stillbirth, premature birth, or death of a child during or ahead of their unpaid parental leave;
- changes, which enable all eligible parents to access up to 30 days of their unpaid parental leave flexibly, complementing similar changes that were made to the Paid Parental Leave scheme in July 2020.
Parental Leave and Traumatic Events
Eligible parents may be able to take unpaid parental leave for a maximum of 12 months if they experience a stillbirth or the death of a child during the first 24 months of life.
Employers cannot direct parents to return to work (i.e. cancel their unpaid parental leave) after a stillbirth or death of a child. Employees may choose to return to work after a stillbirth or death of a child providing the usual notice requirements are given.
Premature Birth & Birth-related Complications
Parents who experience premature births or other birth-related complications that result in the newborn baby being hospitalised immediately after birth can now agree with their employer to pause their unpaid parental leave.
This means that while their baby is hospitalised, parents may return to work and the period where they are back at work won’t be deducted from their unpaid parental leave. The employee can then resume their unpaid parental leave at the earliest of:
- a time agreed with their employer
- the end of the day when the newborn is discharged from the hospital, or
- sadly, if the newborn dies, the end of the day when the newborn dies.
Taking Unpaid Parental Leave Flexibly
A recent change to the legislation now permits an employee to take up to 30 days of their 12 month unpaid parental leave flexibly up until their child’s second birthday or the second anniversary of their adopted child’s placement.
Flexible unpaid parental leave can be taken as:
- a single continuous period of 1 day or longer
- separate periods of 1 day or longer each.
Flexible unpaid parental leave can be taken within the first 24 months of the birth or placement of an adopted child.
However, the employee’s entitlement to unpaid parental leave, except for flexible unpaid parental leave, will end on the first day that the employee takes flexible unpaid parental leave. This means that if an employee is planning on taking a continuous period of unpaid parental leave, they should do so before they take any flexible unpaid parental leave.
Managing parental leave can be a complex issue and advice should be sought and arrangements discussed at least 10 weeks before the leave is to commence.
Subscribers to Your HRdocs can download an updated Parental Leave Policy from our website or should you have any questions how this impacts a specific situation in your business, please contact us.