Can an employer decide not to provide the opportunity to cash up Annual Leave to employees? If an employee has annual, sick and alternative leave on Termination, which one(s) must be paid out? Do you have to pay an employee if they are on Jury Service? What period of gross earnings is the ‘extra pay’ […]
Category: Compliance
Entitled, Accrued and Advanced leave – what is the difference?
We get a lot of questions around the labels used in payroll to describe Annual Leave so the following will hopefully help. Entitled, Accrued, and Advanced are used to define the different elements of Annual Leave. To understand them you first must remember that an employee’s Annual Leave year runs for a 12 month period […]
Minimum Sick Leave Entitlement increases from 5 to 10 days after July 24th, 2021
It is now confirmed that from 24 July 2021, minimum sick leave entitlements will increase to 10 days per year. Employees will get the extra five days when they reach their next entitlement date – either after reaching 6 months’ employment or on their sick leave entitlement anniversary (12 months after they were last entitled […]
Coronavirus and Leave options
Well it is a trending topic at the moment so just an update on our situation and options should an employee contract the virus. Firstly, about four years ago we moved all our systems into the cloud as part of our Business Continuity Plan, this was after successfully coming through the Earthquakes in 2011 uninterrupted. […]
Bottle Store owner fined $200,000 for exploiting staff
A liquor store owner whose behaviour was branded “heinous” by a judge will pay up an unprecedented $200,000 fine for underpaying migrant workers – but is unrepentant. Six Indian migrants were underpaid a total of $250,000 by Paramjeet Singh Parihar and Kuldip Kaur Parihar while working at the couple’s Super Liquor bottle stores in the […]
Directors can be held personally liable for a breach of the Holidays Act
An Otago business and its director must pay $82,500 for record-keeping breaches involving nearly 20 young workers, following a determination by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA). New Zealand Mountain Hunting Ltd, that operates a hunting lodge outside of Omarama, has been fined $55,000 and director Gary Herbert has been ordered to personally pay a further […]
Dunedin Grocery Store fined $53,000
A Dunedin grocery store and its director found to have flouted employment law have been fined $53,000. The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) handed down the penalties for 40 employment breaches and attempting to deceive labour inspectors. Director Quing (Jade) Luo, was made personally responsible for $8960 in fines. In November 2017, inspectors visited the convenience store to check […]
Contractor or Employee? Getting it wrong can be very costly
The former directors of a Dunedin taxi company have been found personally liable for failing to pay minimum wages and holiday pay. The Employment Relations Authority found Ronald Grant and Maureen Grant treated four taxi drivers as contractors when they were, in fact, employees of Southern Taxis in Dunedin. The decision followed an earlier determination by […]
What is Gross Earnings (MBIE)
Gross Earnings is used in a number of different situations to calculate payment for holidays and other leave. When to use gross earnings in holiday and leave calculations Gross earnings is used to calculate: ordinary weekly pay for determining payment for annual holidays (when the ordinary weekly pay formula is used) average weekly earnings for […]
The cost of Payroll Compliance
Payroll Compliance is possibly the biggest reason why companies choose to outsource their payroll to a company like Ezypay. In the UK, around 80% of companies outsource their payroll. This figure will be much less here possibly due to the Kiwi ‘can do’ attitude. Unfortunately, companies still get it wrong as per the following examples […]