Getting Leave Management Right in Employment Hero

Why leave management is more complex than it looks

Leave entitlements are one of the most frequently misunderstood areas of Australian employment law. The National Employment Standards set out minimum entitlements for annual leave, personal leave, compassionate leave, and other leave types — but these interact with modern awards, enterprise agreements, and individual contracts in ways that aren't always straightforward.

In Employment Hero, leave management is only as good as the configuration behind it. If your leave types, accrual rules, and approval workflows aren't set up correctly, you'll end up with incorrect leave balances, frustrated employees, and potential compliance exposure.

Getting the basics right

Annual leave accrues at the rate of four weeks per year for full-time employees, pro-rated for part-time employees. In Employment Hero, this needs to be configured correctly for each employment type — and if your business has employees covered by awards that provide additional leave entitlements (such as shift workers entitled to five weeks), those need to be configured separately.

Personal leave — which covers sick leave and carer's leave — accrues at ten days per year for full-time employees, pro-rata for part-time. Like annual leave, unused balances carry over from year to year under the NES — there is no cap.

Long service leave is governed by state and territory legislation, which varies significantly. If you have employees in multiple states, you'll need to configure Employment Hero to apply the correct long service leave rules for each jurisdiction.

Approval workflows and manager access

Employment Hero's leave approval workflow allows you to configure who approves leave requests and what the approval process looks like. For most businesses, a simple one-level approval — where the employee's direct manager approves leave — is sufficient. For larger businesses or those with complex team structures, multi-level approval workflows may be appropriate.

Make sure your managers have the right level of access in Employment Hero to approve leave requests and view their team's leave balances. A common configuration error is setting up the approval workflow correctly but failing to give managers the access they need to action it.

Importing historical leave balances

If you're migrating to Employment Hero from another system, importing historical leave balances accurately is critical. Errors in opening balances will compound over time and can be difficult to identify and correct later. Take the time to reconcile your leave balances before migration, and verify the imported balances against your previous system before going live.

For businesses that have been managing leave manually — in spreadsheets or on paper — the migration process is an opportunity to audit your leave records and correct any errors. It's worth investing the time to get this right before go-live rather than inheriting errors into your new system.

Common leave management errors to watch for

Casual employees are not entitled to paid annual leave or personal leave under the NES — their casual loading compensates for these entitlements. If casual employees are incorrectly configured as permanent employees in Employment Hero, they may accrue leave entitlements they're not entitled to, creating a liability on your books.

Part-time employees' leave entitlements are pro-rated based on their ordinary hours. Make sure Employment Hero has the correct ordinary hours recorded for each part-time employee — errors here will result in incorrect leave accruals.