Employers will be required to determine if an employee’s employment has been continuous for the purpose of calculating certain entitlements ie., leave, notice and redundancy pay.

Continuous employment is service provided without interruption in accordance with a contract of employment.

Under most awards, service will be deemed to be continuous notwithstanding some authorised absences such as annual leave, personal/carers leave, public holidays etc. Some leave, although authorised, may not count as time worked when entitlements are calculated.

The Fair Work Act provides that continuous service does not include the following absences (an excluded period):-

• Any period of unauthorised leave, ie., abandonment of employment, engaging in industrial action or any absence that is not consistent with a direction made by the employer;
• Any period of unpaid leave, ie., unpaid parental leave or unpaid carer’s leave, or unpaid authorised absence (LWOP).

An excluded period does not break an employee’s continuous service with the employer, but does not count towards the length of the employee’s continuous service.

When an employee needs to determine such things as:-

• Requests for flexible working arrangements.
• Parental leave and related entitlements.
• Notice of termination.

a period of service is the period in which the employee has been employed, but does not include any periods of unauthorised absences.

HR Advice Online can assist you with determining an employee’s continuous service.

Please contact us on 1300 720 004 or via email at [email protected] for more information on how we can help you.

Information in HR Advice Online guides and blog posts is meant purely for educational discussion of human resources issues. It contains only general information about human resources matters and due to factors such as government legislation changes, may not be up-to-date at the time of reading. It is not legal advice and should not be treated as such.