Compassionate and community service leave

In today’s workplace, annual leave and personal/carer’s leave are well-known staples, providing employees with much-needed rest and the ability to care for themselves and their families. While these types of leave are crucial for employers to understand, there are other significant leave types that cater to specific circumstances, such as compassionate leave and community service leave, which are often less understood but equally important.

In this article, we’ll explore compassionate leave and community service leave.

Compassionate leave

Previously known as bereavement leave, compassionate leave enables full-time and part-time employees to access 2 full days paid leave each time a member of the immediate family or household dies or contracts a life threatening illness or injury.

Like personal/carer’s leave, having a stringent compassionate leave policy in place is essential. Whilst you would hate to think this leave is abused, we have all heard of the HR manager who has an employee with 6 deceased grandfathers! Employers are well within their rights to ask for evidence that satisfies them leave is being used for the proper purpose. An example of this evidence may be a statutory declaration. Due to the sensitive nature of this topic, discretion is vital in this area. Evidence is something you may only choose to request in suspicious circumstances.

Compassionate leave, unlike annual leave and personal/carer’s leave, doesn’t accrue based on an employee’s ordinary hours of work. Essentially this means an employee can access paid leave immediately when they commence with you (should the occasion arise). As this leave doesn’t accrue, it’s not paid out on termination of employment nor does it ‘roll over’ from year to year like annual leave and personal/carer’s leave. When an employee accesses this leave they’re simply paid at their base rate of pay for the hours they would’ve worked.

Community service leave

Employees are entitled to be absent from work to participate in eligible emergency services activities or jury duty.

Community service leave is generally unpaid, however if an employee is absent for the purpose of serving on a jury, they’ll be entitled to be paid at their base rate of pay for the first 10 days of their absence. If an employee receives money from serving on a jury, any money they receive is deducted from what an employer will be obligated to pay.

Community service leave, unlike annual leave or personal/carer’s leave, doesn’t accrue based on an employee’s ordinary hours. The leave is uncapped. As the leave is unpaid, paid leave won’t accrue on any absence however unlike other forms of unpaid leave, it’ll count as ‘service’ for the purpose of calculating an employee’s tenure.

Create leave policies with Citation HR

Our HR software has a library of policies, documents, and templates so you can ensure you remain compliant when creating leave policies for employees. Even better, our team of workplace experts can help tailor workplace policies for you’re business via our HR Advice Line.