Keeping Records

The Fair Work Act requires employers to keep various records in relation to their employees. These include:

1.        Time and wages records

2.        Leave records, including copies of any agreement to cash out annual leave including dates and when payments are made,

3.        Superannuation records,

4.        And details of termination, including how, why and who terminated the employment.

Other records are required if you have an individual flexibility agreement and pieceworkers.

Failure to keep records can mean that the employer can be fined if the records aren’t kept or are incorrect. Employment records must be kept for seven years but there are good reasons to keep them beyond that period. Too often we are asked to assist with calculating long service leave and neither party can remember the actual date the employee started working. If a long service leave dispute goes to the Industrial Commission the Commissioner will want to know the exact dates as when making any order the calculation goes to four decimal places and looks at years, months, weeks and days.

Further, any claim for untaken annual leave goes back to the commencement date as an entitlement to annual leave does not disappear over time.  In a recent matter with an employee who had been with the employer for over 12 years a dispute arose as the details of how much leave the employee had taken in years gone past was unknown.

Other record keeping is important. In a recent unfair dismissal claim the employer terminated the employee for poor performance and claimed that they had spoken to the employee on a number of occasions about poor work. However, no records of the meetings were made, so the dates and what was spoken about were disputed by the employee. It is essential that records be kept of such meetings or discussions, noting the date, the issues discussed and who was present. They can be as simple as a diary note or a record of interview placed in the employee’s file. Obviously, more formal warnings, should be properly documented. Even verbal warnings should be diarised or recorded in some manner by the employer.

If you have any questions about the records to be kept contact Andrew for more information