Hi there Andrew Koleda from On Demand HR here with this quick tip on annual leave.

We were recently asked a question from a client if an employee can claim sick leave whilst on approved annual leave. The short answer to this question, is yes the employee can claim sick leave and effectively convert their annual leave to sick or personal leave subject to following the business is policy on applying for sick leave.

Quite often we suggest to clients to have a policy that requires the employee to call the business when accessing their sick leave, rather then allowing them to use e-mail, social media or SMS. Additionally, we typically recommend that the business reserves the right to request a medical certificate for any absence at their discretion. Please keep in mind that in order to put this in practice, you should really be outlining these policies in your company’s policy and procedures manual in advance. You may get some resistance from employees if you try and enforce them in hindsight.

Although it was not part of the client’s original question, we went indeed some additional research and although not expressly dealt with in the legislation, in NSW at least we feel that an employee can also access personal leave whilst they are taking their long service leave entitlement. Please remember that long service leave is dealt with by state based legislation and whilst this may be true for NSW, we have not reviewed long service leave legislation across the rest of the country.

So that’s it for this short HR tip and who knew that’s equal personal leave could be claimed whilst on approved annual leave. If your business has any tricky questions in relation to leave or any other HR or workplace relations matter, please let me introduce some of the On Demand HR team who will share some details around our free HR consultation and strategic action plan.