Year-end HR Checklist
Hopefully you have created a checklist to wrap up 2020, if you haven’t yet done so, we have compiled a quick-fire list of things you should be thinking of before the year ends.
1. Privacy Act 2020
The new Privacy Act came into effect on 1 December, and this is what you need to be aware of from an employment perspective:
You are now required to notify the Privacy Commissioner if a privacy breach, including any breach by an employee, has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm.
New enforcement measures mean that when an organisation has failed to report a privacy breach, the Privacy Commissioner is able to award a fine of up to $10,000.
There are now cross border safeguards to protect information being sent overseas.
Other updates to privacy principles to reflect the technological age, and digital operations.
If you haven’t yet done so, we recommend you undertake a review of your existing privacy policy, including the privacy provisions contained within your Employment Agreements and Handbooks. You should also use this opportunity to review your current processes, especially those around reporting breaches (i.e. who is in charge of this) and your data collection systems.
Share the privacy updates with your team, for example at a toolbox team meeting, make the team aware of their obligations, and who is responsible for what.
Still confused and want to understand more, check out the Privacy Learning platform here, which offers free online privacy education.
2. Closedown payments
By now (we hope), you would have provided your team with the required 14 days’ notice of closedown, directing employees to take annual leave over the closedown, or take unpaid leave if they have no leave available. Remember, if the closedown period includes any public holidays, you need to pay staff for them if it falls on a usual working day – to find out more about public holiday dates check out our blog here.
Where it gets tricky at times, is with employees who have been employed for less than a year, a recent employment court decision has clarified that during a closedown period, when the employee has worked less than a year, that they should be paid as follows:
Holiday pay of 8% of their gross earnings up to the closedown start date, minus any annual leave they have taken in advance;
Change the employee’s anniversary date to the beginning of the closedown period.
You may also agree for employees to take leave in advance, however in light of recent case law this should be offered in addition to the above payment, not as an alternative. You can find out more around closedown payments here.
3. Pay equity
The Pay Equity Amendment Act 2020 came into effect in November this year, with an aim to address the pay equity gap in scenarios where an employer or an industry predominantly employs one gender. The new law includes a range of factors employers must consider and enables workers to make a pay equity claim using a process aligned with our existing bargaining framework.
As a result of these amendments we suggest you consider reviewing your pay equity policies and the gender make up of your workplace. Its also a good time to reflect on your salary benchmarking processes, along with your workplace diversity policies.
4. Expected employment changes in 2021
A Bill has been introduced to increase sick leave entitlements to 10 days, although the current maximum entitlement of any unused sick leave at 20 days per annum will remain. The Bill will need to go through a full select committee process, and is expected to pass in mid-2021, with any changes coming into effect a few months thereafter.
We are advising clients at present to start reviewing your sick leave policies, and employment agreements. We are removing reference to 5 days within employment agreements and handbooks to prepare for this change, mid to late next year.
You also need to start thinking about cover, if your staff are able to take double their existing sick leave entitlements, will you need extra staff on the ground to help cover for absenteeism, and more importantly, how will you cover this additional cost, and train these people.
Minimum wage is set to increase further in April 2021 from $18.90 to $20.00. We also note that there are ongoing discussions being held around the Living Wage increasing beyond $22.10.
At this stage, the introduction of a public holiday for Matariki has been put on hold to 2022, much to SME businesses relief.
As always we are here to help navigate and support you with your HR needs in 2021. You can contact us on 0800 HR FOR U, or book an appointment to meet with one of our team online here.
Paige Hellier
ER and Legal Consultant