Personal and carer’s leave in Australia, explained for employers abroad

Full-time employees have an annual entitlement of 10 paid days of personal/carer’s leave, and part-time employees receive a pro rata share. The entitlement is one of the National Employment Standards (NES) in the Fair Work Act 2009, and it appears in the Fair Work Information Statement that goes to every new starter.

The pro rata share is easiest to picture in hours. A part-timer contracted for 60% of a full-time week has a yearly entitlement worth the same number of hours as six full-time days. Treat that as an illustration of the principle; the actual accrual is calculated by the payroll system from the hours written into the contract.

The 10 days are a statutory minimum and are separate from annual leave, which is 4 weeks a year for full-time staff. A modern award, an enterprise agreement or your own contract can be more generous, and a contract should never describe a smaller figure than the NES provides.

For employers whose home rules give open-ended sick pay, or no statutory sick pay, a fixed annual figure is simple to plan around. The work lies in the process around each absence, which the sections below cover in turn.

Putting a price on the entitlement helps with budgeting. Take the salary used in our Sydney cost example, AUD 110,000 a year, and assume a five-day week with 260 paid working days. One day’s base pay is then about AUD 423, and a full year’s 10 days of personal/carer’s leave is worth about AUD 4,231 of salary. That money is already inside the salary line; the real cost to the business is the lost working time and any cover you arrange, because the employee is paid the same salary either way.

The leave covers two situations: the employee cannot work because of their own illness or injury, or they need to care for or support an immediate family or household member who is ill, injured or facing an unexpected emergency. Because both uses draw on one balance, Australians tend to say “personal/carer’s leave” as a single term.

Beyond the paid balance, an employee may take up to 2 days of unpaid carer’s leave on each occasion that a family or household member needs care. Casual employees hold this unpaid right as well, even though they build up no paid personal leave.

Compassionate leave is its own NES entitlement: 2 days per occasion, paid for permanent employees and unpaid for casuals, when a family or household member dies or suffers a life-threatening illness or injury. It is recorded separately from the 10-day balance, so the leave records kept by payroll need a line for it.

A short written leave policy for Australian staff should name each of these types, say how each is requested and point to the Fair Work Information Statement for the statutory wording. Copying a sick-leave policy written for another country usually leaves at least one of them out.

Yes, within limits: the Fair Work Act and any award that covers the role set what notice and evidence an employer may require, and the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the current rules. Read that guidance before writing a policy, and check the current position with the Fair Work Ombudsman whenever the policy is reviewed.

For a team managed from abroad, the decisions that cause friction are operational. Settle in advance who the employee notifies when their manager is asleep in another time zone, where any certificate is sent and who enters the absence so that the next pay run picks it up.

Time zones make the notice rule more than a formality. If the manager is in Europe or North America, an employee who falls ill before an Australian working day may be messaging someone who is off shift. A shared absence address monitored in Australian hours, or a simple form that notifies both the manager and the employer of record, removes the need for anyone to chase a reply overnight.

Treat medical details as sensitive. Keep certificates out of shared inboxes, chat channels and project tools. Where an employer of record acts as legal employer, its HR and payroll team holds the employment record, and the line manager on your side needs to know that the person is away and roughly when they expect to return, not the diagnosis.

Put the process in the onboarding pack and repeat it in the team’s working agreement. A single procedure applied the same way to every member of the Australian team is easier to explain and to defend than a string of case-by-case calls by different managers.

Every employee in Australia, including casuals, can take up to 10 paid days a year of family and domestic violence leave. It is a stand-alone NES entitlement with its own balance, tracked apart from personal/carer’s leave and annual leave.

The leave lets an employee deal with the effects of family and domestic violence without losing pay. The Fair Work Ombudsman describes the kinds of activity it covers, and managers should be pointed to that description instead of improvising their own test.

Handling matters as much as the entitlement. A request may reach a line manager in your company first, so anyone managing Australian staff needs a brief instruction: accept the request, pass it to the employer of record’s HR contact and do not ask for more detail than the process requires. Keep the record visible to as few people as possible, and read the Fair Work Ombudsman’s guidance on pay records and payslips before the first request arrives.

Include the leave in workforce budgets on the same basis as personal leave. The 10 paid days are part of each employee’s package, and a budget that leaves them out understates the cost of an Australian role.

A casual employee accrues no paid personal/carer’s leave and no paid annual leave, and is paid a casual loading of 25% on the base rate instead. Three leave rights still apply: 2 days of unpaid carer’s leave per occasion, 2 days of unpaid compassionate leave per occasion and the whole 10-day paid entitlement for family and domestic violence.

The loading is paid on every hour the casual works, whether or not they are ever unwell, so casual terms do not remove the cost of sick days so much as spread it across the whole pay packet. The statutory rules on who can properly be engaged as a casual were also rewritten recently, and the Fair Work Ombudsman’s current guidance is the place to check them before you offer casual terms.

If the work is steady and ongoing, a permanent part-time contract often fits the facts better than casual engagement, and personal leave then accrues pro rata from the first day. Our Australian employment contract checklist explains how to set the employment type in writing.

Casual status also changes what a manager can expect on sick days. A casual who is unwell simply does not work the shift and is not paid for it, so there is no leave request to approve. Rostering and cover become the questions, and a manager used to permanent staff should be told the difference before the first casual starts.

Personal/carer’s leave is one of several leave entitlements, and an overseas employer planning cover for an Australian role should see them side by side. Most come from the NES; long service leave is the exception, because it is set by each state and territory.

• Annual leave: 4 weeks a year for full-time staff, pro rata for part-time, accruing progressively; none for casuals.
• Unpaid parental leave: up to 12 months once the employee has 12 months’ service, and they can ask for another 12.
• Parental Leave Pay: 26 weeks from 1 July 2026, funded by the government at the national minimum wage rate and usually passed through the employer’s payroll for eligible long-term staff (Department of Social Services).
• Long service leave: state law; in New South Wales, 8.67 weeks after 10 years’ continuous service (NSW Government), while Victoria starts the entitlement after 7 years.

The practical point for managers abroad is that each type has its own balance and its own rules on evidence and pay. A single “time off” bucket in a global HR tool is not enough; the Australian payroll record needs every type kept apart.

Once Employer of Record Australia is engaged, your new starter is paid and legally employed by us as employer of record, so we keep the leave balances, pay leave taken in the ordinary pay run and hold the employment file. Your managers approve absences day to day and tell us what was taken, in the format and by the cut-off agreed at onboarding.

Each pay run’s leave payments flow into the employer’s Single Touch Payroll (STP) Phase 2 report to the ATO, and that report splits gross pay into categories with paid leave shown on its own. An absence entered late or under the wrong type therefore surfaces in the employer’s reporting as well as on the payslip. The guide to PAYG withholding and STP walks through a full pay run.

A short checklist for the first week of an Australian hire:

• Agree who the employee notifies of an absence, and by what time in their local day.
• Confirm where certificates or other evidence go, and who can open them.
• Send us a leave summary before each payroll cut-off.
• Brief every manager on family and domestic violence leave requests.
• Keep compassionate and unpaid carer’s leave on separate lines.

To see which parts of this sit with us and which stay with you, read the EOR services page or start with our plain-language EOR explainer.