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Paid parental leave changes ahead

Having a child is an exciting time that usually involves paid and unpaid time off work.

The Government has made some changes to paid parental leave, with others to follow. It’s important you know how this will affect your workers and business.

From 1 April, staff who’ve worked for you for six months or more will be entitled to 18 weeks of government-paid parental leave. This is up from 16 weeks. Other changes are also in the pipeline — see below for more detail.

Use the calculator on the New Zealand At Work website to find out what your worker is entitled to. The calculation is based on:

  • the baby’s due date
  • how long you’ve employed the worker
  • their average pay
  • how many hours they work.
    If you’re self-employed, you can use the calculator to work out your own entitlements.

tip Check out Business.govt.nz’s Staff and HR section for more on how to handle parental leave.

Other proposals include:

  • workers taking parental leave more flexibly, in agreement with their employer;
  • extending entitlements to a wider range of primary carers than biological or formal adoptive parents — examples include wh?ngai arrangements, or grandparents and other permanent care arrangements in place of the child’s parents;
  • providing parental leave payments of up to 13 weeks for parents of preterm babies born before 37 weeks;
  • job-protected leave of up to 26 weeks for workers who have been with their employer for more than six, but fewer than 12 months;
  • extending parental leave payments to casual and seasonal workers, people with more than one employer and workers who’ve recently changed jobs — if they have worked any 26 weeks out of the 52 immediately prior to the expected delivery date, or prior to becoming the primary carer, for at least an average of 10 hours a week.

Read more about the proposed changes on the MBIE website.

Current rules stop a person on parental leave returning to work for activities like training and planning days. From 1 April, those qualifying for parental leave will be allowed to work an occasional day and attend courses while on paid or unpaid leave. Both employer and employee must agree to this, and there’ll be a limit to how often it can happen.

Talk to your people about their leave requirements as soon as you can. Workers should apply for parental leave in writing to you, including dates they want to be away from work and requests to transfer leave to partners. You’ll need to respond within 21 days.

For a guide to parental leave, plus forms and sample letters, check out Employment.govt.nz’s Parental leave section.

Inland Revenue’s website has forms to apply for paid parental leave payments:

Employees use IR880
Self-employed workers use IR888

Source – www.business.govt.nz