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Your employees may ask to take leave so they can get Parental Leave Pay or Dad and Partner Pay.
The Paid Parental Leave scheme doesn’t change any of your employee’s existing leave entitlements or give them a new entitlement to leave.
To get Parental Leave Pay or Dad and Partner Pay, your employee must meet the work test. There are some exceptions to the work test if they stopped work due to certain circumstances. Your employee may request evidence from you to confirm both:
- that they would have continued working had it not been for their circumstances
- the period they were unable to work.
Parental Leave Pay
It’s up to your employee to apply for Parental Leave Pay through us and work out leave arrangements with you.
We’ll contact you if you need to provide Parental Leave Pay to your employee. We’ll also provide the Paid Parental Leave funds to pay your employees.
As an employer, you must provide Parental Leave Pay to an eligible employee who meets all of the following:
- has a newborn or recently adopted child
- has worked for you for at least 12 months before the expected date of birth or adoption
- expects to get a block of at least 8 weeks of Parental Leave Pay within one year of the child’s birth or adoption
- will be your employee until at least the last day of the block of Parental Leave Pay you’ll deliver
- lives in Australia.
For employees with a child born from 1 July 2023, the block of at least 8 weeks must meet all of the following additional criteria:
- be made up of consecutive weekdays, Monday to Friday with no breaks
- not contain any weekends
- be the first payment of Parental Leave Pay for this child.
Your employee may decide to get their Parental Leave Pay in multiple blocks. If they meet all of these conditions we’ll only ask you to deliver their first block of payments. We’ll deliver any subsequent blocks of payment to them directly.
If your employee doesn’t meet the above criteria, you don’t need to provide Parental Leave Pay. However, if you both agree, you can still provide it to an employee who’s eligible but doesn’t meet all of these criteria. Register through our Business Hub and choose to provide Parental Leave Pay. You must do this before your employee submits their claim.
If the block of Parental Leave Pay for your employee is in the past, we may pay them directly.
You don’t need to provide Parental Leave Pay to an eligible employee who gets an income support payment from us.
We’ll provide Parental Leave Pay directly to eligible parents who don’t get it from their employer. There are things you need to do to accept Parental Leave Pay.
Dad and Partner Pay
Employees with a child born or adopted before 1 July 2023 may ask to take unpaid leave so they can get Dad and Partner Pay. You don’t provide Dad and Partner Pay, we’ll always pay your employee directly.
It’s up to your employee to claim the payment from us and to work out leave arrangements with you. To get Dad and Partner Pay, your employee must be on unpaid leave and not working.
You may pay your employee a top-up payment to add to their Dad and Partner Pay. For example, you may choose to pay the difference between your employee’s Dad and Partner Pay and their normal wage. We don’t consider a top-up as paid leave for the purposes of Dad and Partner Pay eligibility.
From 1 July 2023, the Paid Parental Leave scheme is changing. Employees with a child born or adopted from that date will no longer get Dad and Partner Pay. We’ll add those days to Parental Leave Pay. Dads or partners can claim Parental Leave Pay.
Employer Toolkit
The Employer Toolkit is your complete guide to the Paid Parental Leave scheme and what you need to do.
Legal obligations and templates and guides
The templates and guides on the Fair Work Ombudsman website can help you when employees ask for parental leave.
The Supporting Working Parents website lists your legal obligations to employees who are pregnant, on parental leave or who are working parents.
Read the employer guide to supporting working parents on the Supporting Working Parents website.