As of September 2021, legislation introduced new casual conversion laws, which requisites all employers to offer eligible employees the opportunity for conversion to permanent employment. Within a society where casual employees often seek consistency within hours it is ever increasing that casual employees are meeting the eligibility criteria for conversion. To remain compliant and to avoid repercussions of penalty and back payment of entitlements with interest, it is critical that employers offer conversion and adjust employment status and documentation to reflect this.
In accordance with the casual conversion legislation employers need to ensure that they have given all existing and new employees a copy of the ‘Casual Conversion Information Statement’. It is required of an employer, by law, to provide a copy of this document to all employees within the first 12 months of employment, and therefore advised that this document be distributed within the initial onboarding process for new employees.
Casual conversion must be offered by an employer with 15 or more employees. It is to be offered to any eligible employee or an eligible employee can make a request of such, enabling a transition from casual to permanent employment status. An employee’s eligibility for conversion requisites:
- Employed by the employer for 12 months or more;
- Relatively regular or patterned hours of work for the last 6 months of employment; OR
- No significant changes to work arrangements to be made in response to conversion.
A casual employee can make more than one request for casual conversion, with the ability to do so every 6 months on the provision of changed circumstance. For example, Sally was refused casual conversion after having applied with 3 months of consistent and patterned work hours, she then continued to work the same patterned hours for another 3 months making her eligible to reapply with an accumulative 6 months of evidenced work hours to justify and increase her eligibility.
An employer must provide a written letter of offer for casual conversion within 21 days of making the appropriate eligibility assessment, or contrastingly send a written letter explaining why an offer of conversion will NOT be made in accordance with reasonable grounds for refusal. Reasonable grounds for refusal are inclusive of employee hours being reduced or ceased within the preceding 12 months, and/or upcoming changes to the days and times of an employee’s current work hours that will see a change to the previously patterned hours or meet the employees prior availability. For more information on reasonable grounds for refusal, see our info guide on casual conversion.
At Assurance HR Management we assist many organisations to review and manage compliance with the casual conversion legislative requirements, contact us today on 1800 577 515 to discuss how we can help you within this process.
*Information correct at the time of publishing. Please be advised that there are impending Government changes to casual employment legislation of which we will keep you informed.
