“Service” and “continuous service” are words used in awards and the Fair Work Act to describe the period an employee has worked for an employer.

Service

An employee’s period of service is the entire length of time they’ve worked for an employer. Some types of absences are excluded from service, which means they don’t count towards an employee’s period of continuous service.

Absences which are excluded from counting as service include:

• unauthorised absences
• unpaid leave or unpaid authorised absences.

A period of service is also sometimes called an employee’s period of employment.

Termination of employment will break an employee’s period of service. However, there are some exceptions to this. For more information, see:

• Employee entitlements on a transfer of business
• Re-employment after termination and continuous service.

Continuous service

Continuous service is an unbroken period of service. It’s the period of service an employee has that counts towards the accrual of certain entitlements. An example is unpaid parental leave.

An excluded period won’t break an employee’s period of service. However, usually the excluded period won’t count towards the length of an employee’s continuous service.

Examples of unpaid leave that are excluded periods include:

• Unpaid parental leave
• Unpaid carers leave
• Unpaid compassionate leave for casuals
• Unpaid community service leave.

Excluded period exceptions

There are some periods of unpaid leave or unpaid authorised absences which aren’t excluded periods. This means that the time spent absent from work will still count towards an employee’s period of continuous service.

This includes when:

• an employee is on community service leave, for example jury duty
• an employee’s enterprise agreement or employment contract provides that a period of stand down is not an excluded period
• an award provides that continuous service is not broken by these absences.

There are also some times when approved unpaid leave will count towards an employee’s continuous service for certain entitlements. 

For more details, see:

• Unpaid leave
• Unpaid pandemic leave.

Entitlements that require continuous service

Entitlements which are impacted by whether an employee has a required period of continuous service include:

• redundancy payments
• unpaid parental leave
• notice of termination
• eligibility to request a flexible working arrangement.