Q: We have a client who has an employee – part of their deal is that the employee takes the school holidays off. She may take Annual Leave for those days if she has Annual Leave available – if not the leave is processed as Leave without pay.

The client would just like to confirm that if the LWOP exceeds 1 week – then they are not required to pay any Statutory Holidays which fall in that period of unpaid leave. What is best practice in this situation.

We currently Accumulate Annual Leave for this employee for the periods of unpaid leave – so we therefore  do not extend the Anniversary date by the  number of unpaid weeks.

When calculating 52 week Average for this employee – should we be removing the unpaid weeks from the calculations ie – if they have had 10 unpaid weeks during the year, should our 52 Week Divisor be 42?

A: If there is agreement to count unpaid leave as part of continuous employment then you cannot remove the unpaid period from the 52 weeks for AWE.

If the employee is on a period of agreed unpaid leave then they would not be working so would not get PH’s during that period.