Paying Employees During Easter

Public holidays allow Australians a chance to put down tools and celebrate a religious or cultural event, or just to relax. Many employees in Australia will do just that over the coming Easter weekend, and on Anzac Day on 25 April.

You will most likely still need to pay your permanent employees that would normally work on the designated public holiday. However, generally you don’t have to pay them public holiday penalty rates – in most cases you just pay their base rate of pay for the ordinary hours they usually would have worked on that day, unless the applicable award, registered agreement or their employment contract says otherwise. In some cases, you will also have to pay employees, even when they are not rostered on a public holiday. To know for sure, you will have to check the Award or Enterprise Agreement applicable.

If you run a café, or operate in the tourism industry, a public holiday may be your busiest time of year, and you might need all hands on deck.

Asking Employees to Work on Public Holidays

If your request is reasonable, you can ask an employee to work on a public holiday. The employee can only refuse if the refusal is reasonable or if your request is unreasonable. To determine what is reasonable, you need to consider:

• The employee’s personal circumstances, e.g. family responsibilities
• Whether they will get more pay, e.g. penalty rates or a higher rate that reflects the expectation of working public holidays
• The needs of the business
• The type of work they do
• Whether their salary includes public holiday work
• Whether they are full-time, part-time, casual or shift worker
• The amount of notice you gave them about working
• The amount of notice they gave you about not working

Roster your employees easily and quickly from your PC, tablet or phone with BrightHR. Find out more here.

Sort Your Shifts Out with BrightHR

It’s one of the most important parts of your job, but creating a roster can take hours to do – more than it should. Now with BrightHR, you can create rosters in a matter of minutes.

You can publish, share and modify employee rosters directly from our shift planning software. Your teams will receive an instant notification when a roster is published, via the BrightHR mobile app.

BrightHR also provides one clear view of staff and shifts, and one central source for all your rosters, which you and your employees can view, anytime, anywhere.

BrightHR allows you to:

• Create digital rosters, so everyone knows when they’re working
• Add shifts for employees with varying times
• Generate multiple rosters for different teams
• Avoid under or over staffing
• Build and review rosters in draft format before publishing
• Share rosters instantly with applicable staff
• Avoid complex or confusing rosters with our clear and simple format
• Amend and update rosters whilst on the move

Penalty Rates

If employees are working on a public holiday, they may be entitled to public holiday penalty rates. These rates are often much higher than the normal rate of pay.

The Modern Awards or Enterprise or other registered Agreements applicable to your business and the employee will set out the employee’s entitlements when they work a public holiday.

For example, in the Hospitality Award, the public holiday penalty rate for employees working on a public holiday is 225% for permanent employees. The penalty rate depends on the applicable industrial instrument, the employee’s role and hours worked.

Misconception: ‘I already pay above Award rates, so I’m already covered for penalty rates’

It’s great that you pay above the Award rate, but it doesn’t automatically exempt you from paying penalty rates. You still have to pay the applicable public holiday rates for an employee who is working a public holiday, but you may be able to pay the employee a higher rate of pay to off-set a certain amount of public holidays, depending on the provisions in the applicable industrial instrument and their employment contract

Easter Weekend: What to Pay?

States may have different regulations in regard to public holidays which fall on a weekend. In some states, a public holiday is scheduled on the following Monday, in lieu of, or in addition to, the public holiday that fell on the previous Saturday or a Sunday. Generally, if a designated public holiday falls on a weekend, then employees should be paid public holiday rates if they work that day.

So, in South Australia for example, an employee should be paid public holiday rates on Easter Saturday, but Sunday penalty rates on Easter Sunday, as Saturday is a designated public holiday while Sunday is not.

Easter Holidays 2021

Ticked cells indicate which days are public holidays in the respective state or territory.

	2021 date	NSW	Vic	QLD	Act
Good Friday	Friday 2 April	✓	✓	✓	✓
Easter Saturday*	Saturday 3 April	✓	✓	✓	✓
Easter Sunday	Sunday 4 April	✓	✓	✓	✓
Easter Monday	Monday 5 April	✓	✓	✓	✓
Easter Tuesday	Tuesday 6 April
ANZAC Day**	Sunday 25 April	✓	✓	✓	✓

	2021 date	SA	WA	Tas	NT
Good Friday	Friday 2 April	✓	✓	✓	✓
Easter Saturday*	Saturday 3 April	✓			✓
Easter Sunday	Sunday 4 April
Easter Monday	Monday 5 April	✓	✓	✓	✓
Easter Tuesday	Tuesday 6 April			✓
ANZAC Day**	Sunday 25 April	✓	✓	✓	✓

*Easter Saturday is known as Saturday before Easter Sunday in Victoria, and The day after Good Friday in Queensland.

**All states and Territories except NSW, Victoria and Tasmania will have a public holiday on Monday 26 April due to ANZAC Day falling on a Sunday. WA will have two public holidays, on both the Sunday and Monday.

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