Most awards and agreements may provide for the averaging of an employee’s hours over an agreed period.

Under the National Employment Standards full-time and part-time employees get 4 weeks of annual leave a year. Shiftworkers get 5 weeks of annual leave.

Accruing annual leave

Annual leave accrues based on an employee’s ordinary hours of work. This is the same when an employee is working under an averaging arrangement.

Annual leave doesn’t accrue on overtime worked as part of an averaging arrangement.

For more information on how annual leave accrues see Annual leave - Fair Work Ombudsman

Example

Mutsa is a FIFO worker. Mutsa’s swing has 3 weeks on and 1 week off.

Mutsa works an average of 38 ordinary hours per week. Under her award, her hours can be averaged over a period up to 28 days. She works a maximum of 152 ordinary hours over 28 days.

Mutsa works 10.5 hours a day from Monday to Saturday for the 3 weeks she’s onsite. Her hours are averaged over the full swing, and she works for 189 hours over 4 weeks. This means that Mutsa works:

• 152 ordinary hours
• 37 overtime hours.

Mutsa accrues annual leave on the 152 ordinary hours she works. She doesn’t accrue annual leave on the 37 hours of overtime.

Using annual leave

Employees on annual leave get the base rate they would be paid if they worked during the same period.

Example

Mutsa decides she would like to take a week off at the beginning of her 3 week swing. Mutsa’s working week is Monday to Saturday. This means she needs to take 6 days of leave.

Under Mutsa’s award she can be asked to work up to 10 ordinary hours per day, and up to a maximum of 152 hours over a 4 week period before she’s paid overtime.

Mutsa gets paid 10 hours of annual leave for each day she takes off. She’s not paid annual leave for the 0.5 hour that exceeds the maximum ordinary hours she can work in a day.

The annual leave she uses is taken from her annual leave accrual.

The impact of rosters

An employee who is rostered to work different hours on different days gets annual leave based on the ordinary hours they would have worked on the day they take leave.

Example

Rocky’s hours are averaged over a 4 week period. His roster always stays the same, but he works different numbers of hours on each day.

He works for 3 Saturdays each month:

• 1st Saturday – 4 hours
• 2nd Saturday - 8 hours
• 3rd Saturday - 10 hours
• 4th Saturday – day off.

Rocky takes annual leave on the 3rd Saturday in the month. He usually works for 10 ordinary hours on that day. Rocky uses 10 hours of annual leave.

For help in calculating annual leave entitlements use our Leave Calculator.