Employers
Managing family violence leave
Eligible employees can take up to 10 days of paid family violence leave each year if they, or a child living with them has experienced family violence. They can also request short-term flexible working arrangements at any time.
What is family violence?
Family violence is when a person harms or controls a family member or someone they are in a close and personal relationship with. The harm or control can be physical, non-physical, emotional, financial, sexual or a combination of these.
Family violence is sometimes referred to as domestic violence, which is a form of family violence. For more information on understanding the meaning of family violence see:
Understand family violence — New Zealand Ministry of Justice(external link)
What you must do
As an employer, you must:
- allow any eligible employee affected by family violence to take up to 10 days of paid family violence leave a year (in addition to sick leave and annual holidays entitlements)
- consider and respond to any flexible work requests
- protect employees’ personal information
- take steps to make sure employees are safe at work
- give your employee information about suitable support services that can help with the effects of family violence.
Where to get help with family violence
You must not treat your employees adversely (badly or unfairly) in the workplace because you think or know they have experienced family violence.
The law about this is set out in the Employment Relations Act and the Human Rights Act.
Employment Relations Act(external link)
Human Rights Act(external link)
You must do these things even if the employee experienced family violence before they began working for you, or before the law changed on 1 April 2019.
Employees taking family violence leave
Employees who have been affected by family violence can take paid family violence leave if:
- they have worked for you continuously for at least 6 months, or
- they have worked for you for 6 months at any time for:
- an average of 10 hours per week, and
- at least 1 hour in every week or 40 hours in every month.
They can take this leave if:
- they have experienced family violence themselves, or
- a child who has experienced family violence lives with them, even if it is not all the time.
Family violence leave is separate to annual holidays, sick leave and bereavement leave.
Family violence leave and annual holidays
If an employee qualifies for family violence leave and needs it while they are on annual holidays, they can take family violence leave instead of annual holidays. They should inform you of this as soon as they can.
Unused family violence leave
If an employee does not use their family violence leave in 12 months, they cannot carry it over to the next year. If they stop working for you, they are not entitled to be paid out for any family violence leave they have not taken.
Paying your employees
If your employee qualifies for family violence leave, you must pay them while they are on leave.
You must pay them their relevant daily pay (or average daily pay, if applicable) for each day of family violence leave they take on a day they would otherwise have worked — also known as an otherwise working day.
Pay for family violence leave is made in the normal pay cycle.
You do not have to pay an employee if they are receiving weekly payments through ACC.
To help keep your employees safe, consider how family violence leave is requested and recorded in your business. For example:
- allowing employees to request family violence leave outside of the usual leave system
- consider displaying family violence leave as ‘ordinary hours’ on payslips to help keep your employee safe.
Requests for short-term flexible working
Employees affected by family violence can request flexible working arrangements at any time for up to 2 months. These arrangements can help them stay safer and remain in employment.
Working arrangements can include:
- hours and days of work
- location of the employee's workplace
- duties at work.
You must reply to any requests in writing within 10 working days.
A request must include
Employees must ask you in writing for changes to their normal working arrangements unless you have a policy or procedure that says they can make this request verbally. An employee can also get someone else to make a request for them. The request must have the following details:
- the employee’s name
- the date the request is being made on
- that they are asking for short-term flexible working as set out in Part 6AB of the Employment Relations Act 2000
- what they want to change about their normal working arrangements
- how long they want these changes to last — up to 2 months
- when they want these changes to start and finish
- how these changes will help them
- what changes they think you may need to make to the business if you agree to the request.
Part 6AB of the Employment Relations Act 2000(external link)
Responding to a request
You must give your answer to a request for short-term flexible working in writing as soon as you can and within 10 working days.
If you want proof your employee is affected by family violence, you must ask for it within 3 working days of getting the request. If they do not provide proof when asked, you may refuse their request.
You must also give your employee information about suitable support services that can help with family violence. You can do this when you give your written answer to the employee’s request, or before.
Where to get help with family violence
You can use this form to respond to an employee’s request:
Responding to a flexible working request
If you say no to a flexible working request
In some cases, you may not be able to approve a request for short-term flexible working arrangements — however, you must give all requests full consideration.
If you refuse a request, you must say why, giving details in writing. You can only refuse a request if you:
- did not get the proof you asked for within 10 working days of getting the request, or
- are impacted by one or more of the recognised business grounds (‘non-accommodation grounds’).
You cannot refuse a request because it is from an employee who is bound by a collective agreement.
Recognised business grounds for refusing a request
- Work among existing staff cannot be reorganised.
- Additional staff cannot be recruited.
- Quality and performance would be negatively impacted.
- There is not enough work during the periods proposed.
- Structural changes are planned.
- Additional costs would be a burden.
- Customer demand would be negatively impacted.
Requesting proof of family violence
If an employee takes family violence leave or asks for short-term flexible working arrangements, you can ask for proof that they have been affected by family violence.
If you do ask for proof, you and your employee should both act in An underlying principle in employment law which requires employers and employees to deal with each other honestly, openly, and in a fair and timely way.
The law does not state what kind of proof you can accept. Any proof your employee or a child that lives with them has been affected by family violence should be sufficient. Some examples of proof might include:
- a letter or email about what’s going on and how it affects the employee from either a:
- support person
- support organisation
- doctor or nurse
- school
- a declaration — a letter of evidence witnessed by an authorised person like a justice of the peace
- any court or police documents about the family violence.
What else you can do
There may be something else your employee needs that would help them. You can choose to:
- offer more than the minimum 10 days of paid family violence leave
- allow an employee to take annual holidays, unpaid leave or family violence leave in advance if they have used all their paid family violence leave
- allow an employee to keep their flexible working arrangements in place for longer than 2 months
- support them with something else, for example, getting a trespass notice to keep someone out of the workplace who is stalking them, providing a different work phone if someone is sending them abusive messages or an alternative place of work if they usually work from home and can no longer do so safely.
You should record all arrangements in writing.
Developing workplace policies
As an employer, you should have workplace policies in place that provide support for employees affected by family violence.
For example, you should:
- create a family violence policy that sets out how you will support employees who are affected by family violence or have a child living with them that is affected by family violence
- update existing leave and holidays policies, as well as flexible work policies, to recognise the interaction with family violence
- make changes at work to ensure staff affected by family violence are not treated adversely
- make sure your privacy policy, record-keeping procedures, and your health and safety procedures protect employees affected by family violence.
Having clear policies helps build good working relationships between employees and employers. They make it simpler for both you and your employees to handle the effects of family violence.
Create a family violence policy using Workplace Policy Builder.