Employee rights and responsibilities

What are rights and responsibilities

What are employee rights

Employee rights are what your employer must give you by law. They are called minimum employment rights and cover:

• employment agreements
• pay and wages
• breaks
• holidays and leave
• safe and fair workplaces
• flexible working
• union membership
• redundancy, work changes or restructuring
• employment records
• resigning.

Employers cannot give you less rights than what is in the law, even if you’ve both agreed to it. This means you’re entitled to your minimum employment rights even if:

• they’re not mentioned in your employment agreement
• your employment agreement tries to trade minimum rights off against each other
• your employment agreement does not give you all the minimum employment rights
• you do not have a written employment agreement (by law, your employer is required to give you one).

What are employee responsibilities

Your responsibilities are what you are required to do in the workplace.

You have responsibilities at work around:

• attendance
• following all lawful and reasonable requests
• keeping yourself and others safe
• exercising reasonable care, skills and knowledge
• behaving responsibly
• acting in good faith
• being trustworthy and protecting information.

Who has minimum employment rights

All employees are entitled to minimum employment rights.

There are some employment rights that certain employees do not have when they are being dismissed — that is employees who:

• earn $200,000 or more a year (unless they have opted back in to dismissal protections), or
• are on a trial period.

For more information, see:

Dismissal rules for high income earners

Trial periods

Contractors and volunteers 

Contractors (self-employed people) and volunteers are not employees so do not have minimum employment rights. This is because they do not have rights under employment law.

They have rights under different laws instead, for example, rights under the:

• Human Rights Act 1993
• Privacy Act 2020
• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and
• Contracts and Commercial Law Act 2017.

Details of your minimum employment rights

Below are the details of what your employer must give you for your minimum employment rights.

Employment agreements

Your employer must:

• give you a written , also known as a contract, and keep it up to date
• let you get advice or support from someone you trust before you sign the agreement.

Negotiating and accepting as an employee

Pay and wages

Your employer must:

• pay you at least the for each hour you work, including overtime, if you are 16 years or older
• pay you in cash, unless you’ve agreed to receive it a different way, like by direct credit (the bank account must be in your name)
• not take (deduct) money out of your pay unless:
  • it’s lawful
  • it's reasonable, and
  • you asked for or agreed to it in writing, or it’s required by law (for example, tax and student loan payments)
• not make you pay to get or keep your job (a fee like this is called a ‘premium’)
• not tell you where or how to spend your pay.

Pay and wages

Breaks

Your employer must give you regular rest breaks and meal breaks. Rest breaks must be paid.

How many breaks you get and how long they are, depends on how many hours you've worked.

For example, for an 8-hour day, you should get:

• 2 paid 10-minute rest breaks, and
• 1 unpaid 30-minute meal break.

For example, for a 6-hour day, you should get:

• 1 paid 10-minute rest break, and
• 1 unpaid 30-minute meal break.

If you want to breastfeed or express milk at work, employers must provide extra breaks and appropriate facilities.

Rest and breaks

Holidays and leave

There are types of leave your employer must give you once you've worked for them for a certain amount of time.

For more information about each of these leave types and what you are entitled to, see:

Taking annual holidays

Taking sick leave

Taking bereavement leave

Taking family violence leave

Public holidays

There are 12 public holidays each year.

Your employer must pay you for a public holiday if it falls on a day you would usually work.

If you work on a public holiday, your employer must:

• pay you at least time-and-a-half, and
• give you a paid alternative holiday if it falls on a day you would usually work.

Public holidays

Parental leave and jury service

Your employer must give you:

• up to 52 weeks' parental leave to care for a new child if you meet the work requirements
• unpaid leave for jury service.

Taking parental leave

Jury service leave

Safe and fair workplace

Your employer must:

• provide a safe and healthy workplace, with proper training, supervision and equipment — you have the right to stop working if you believe it is unhealthy or unsafe
• not demand to keep your passport
• provide a workplace that is free from bullying, harassment and unlawful discrimination
• not treat you adversely (badly or unfairly) at work, for example:
  • dismissing you without following the rules for dismissal
  • paying you less than others for doing the same, or similar work, because of your sex
  • taking action against you because you made a protected disclosure (‘whistleblowing’)
  • breaking the terms of your employment agreement or not giving you your legal

In most cases, you have the right to raise a personal grievance if you believe you've been treated unfairly at work.

Dismissal

Personal grievances 

Bullying, harassment and discrimination

Your rights and obligations – WorkSafe New Zealand(external link)

Flexible working

You have the right to ask for flexible working arrangements at any time. For example, changes to your hours, days or place of work.

Your employer must consider your request and reply within the required timeframe. They can only say no for certain reasons.

Flexible working

Union membership

Your employer must allow you to join a union if you want to, without any pressure from anyone to join or not join.

Union membership

Redundancy, work changes or restructuring

Your employer must talk to you in if there will be any changes to the workplace that could negatively affect your hours or role, for example:

• changes to your current employment agreement, like fewer hours or days of work
• restructuring
• redundancy.

The basics of workplace change

Redundancy

Employment records

Your employer must keep records about your employment history with them.

For example:

• when you worked
• how long you worked for (for example, the number of hours), and
• what your wages were.

You can ask to see your employment records at any time.

Record-keeping

Resigning

You can resign at any time by:

• telling your employer that you’ll be leaving, and
• working the notice period set out in your employment agreement.

There’s no set legal notice period, so if your agreement does not say what it is, then it must be reasonable.

Giving notice

Negotiating better employment rights

Employers can offer you better terms and conditions than the minimum employment rights.

If your employment agreement has better terms and conditions, your employer must honour these.

The following table shows:

• some minimum employment rights, and
• examples of where employers and employees have negotiated better terms and conditions in their employment agreements.

If you think your rights are not being met

If you think your employee rights are not being met in your workplace, you can report this to us by either:

• using our Get Help form, or
• calling 0800 20 90 20.

Your concerns will be handled in a safe environment.

Get Help form(external link)

Details of your responsibilities

Below are the details of what you must do while in the workplace.

Attendance

You must:

• be at work
• be willing to work during the days and hours and at the times that you agreed to in your employment agreement, and
• only be away from work for a valid reason, for example, if you:
  • are sick
  • are bereaved, or
  • already agreed with your employer to have time off.

Follow all lawful and reasonable requests

You must follow all reasonable requests from your employer as long as they:

• are lawful
• are within the scope of your job and your employment agreement
• do not expose you, or anyone else, to a serious risk to health and safety from an immediate or upcoming hazard (unless risk is a recognised part of the job, for example, if you are a firefighter).

Keep yourself and others safe

You must:

• take reasonable care of your own health and safety and ensure that your actions do not cause harm to yourself or others
• comply with any reasonable instructions, policies or procedures on how to work in a safe and healthy way.

Your rights and obligations – WorkSafe(external link)

Exercise reasonable care, skills and knowledge

You must take care when doing your work. This means doing the job to the best of your abilities. If your employer followed a good hiring process and trained you in everything you need to know, you should have the skills and knowledge needed to do your job.

You should use your skills in a way that protects your employer’s assets and property (‘assets’ are things your employer owns, like equipment or office furniture).

Behave reasonably

You must behave reasonably while at work, and in some cases when you’re not at work, especially if your actions could make your employer look bad. Check your organisation’s rules and policies — for example, a code of conduct — which will outline things like:

• dress standards, including any uniform requirements
• expected behaviour at work
• use of email and social media while at work.

Workplace policies and procedures

Misconduct

Act in good faith

You and your employer must deal with each other in good faith. This includes being open, honest and responsive towards each other.

Good faith

Be trustworthy and protect information

You must:

• respect your employer’s confidentiality and not share private work information outside of work
• be loyal to your employer. This means acting in their best interests and not breaking the trust between you. For example:
  • do not ask for or accept rewards, like travel points, from other people for work you do, unless your employer agrees
  • do not try to take your employer’s customers for yourself while you’re still working there.

Your rights and responsibilities when working more than 1 job

You can have more than 1 job unless your employment agreement says you cannot. For example, some employment agreements have a clause that stops the employee from working for someone else. This is sometimes called a ‘secondary employment provision’.

If you have more than 1 job, you have all the same minimum employment rights for each of your jobs.

You also have the same responsibilities, but you need to make sure you are meeting these for all your employers.

Check if your employment agreement stops you from having another job

Your employer can include something in your employment agreement that says:

• you cannot work for another person, or
• you need your employer’s consent to work for another person.

If your employer does include something like this in your employment agreement, they must have a genuine reason. A genuine reason is one that's based on reasonable grounds — this means a real, sensible reason.

Your employer must put the reason in your employment agreement.

Examples of genuine reasons

Examples of genuine reasons include:

• to protect your employer’s commercially sensitive information
• to protect your employer’s intellectual property rights
• to protect your employer’s commercial reputation
• to prevent a real conflict of interest that cannot be managed another way
• for health and safety reasons to do with your job, for example, making sure truck drivers get enough rest between journeys.

Your responsibilities if you have more than 1 job

You must meet your responsibilities to all your employers.

If you have more than 1 job, this means making sure:

• your work hours and tasks do not make you so tired that it puts you or others in danger
• you do not use your working time and resources from 1 job to do tasks for your other job
• that working more than 1 job does not stop you doing each job well.

If you’re working more than 1 job, you may have to pay more tax:

Tax codes for individuals – Inland Revenue(external link)

Learn about your rights and responsibilities in our learning modules

Watch our Employment Learning Modules to learn about your rights and responsibilities. They're free to access.

Online learning