Standing down employees (update)

Earlier in the year we warned about the complexities surrounding standing down your employees. With Lockdown 2.0 getting underway, The Fair Work Act JobKeeper provisions remain in play to enable qualifying employers to give eligible employees a direction to reduce (even to no hours) their hours or days of work in certain circumstances.

If you or your business is considering standing down employees, you should first ensure you meet the following requirements, which allow you to give stand down directions:

1. qualify for and be enrolled in the JobKeeper scheme
2. be entitled to JobKeeper payments for any employee to whom the direction or agreement applies
3. be a national system employer in the Fair Work system

If you meet the above requirements, you are enabled to direct an eligible employee to temporarily:

• not work on any of the one or more days they would regularly work
• work for a shorter period than the they would regularly work on any day or days
• work less hours overall than they would regularly work

You can request an employee stand down if they cannot be usefully employed due to business changes attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic or to government initiatives put in place to slow the transmission of Covid-19. If you validly make the stand direction, the employee must comply.

However, be aware that you cannot use these provisions to increase the number of hours an employee works. Similarly, the direction also doesn’t apply if an employee is taking authorised leave (i.e. annual leave, long service leave etc), or if an employee is entitled to be absent from work (i.e. on a public holiday).

If you are thinking about standing down any employee, get in touch with our business lawyers Siobhan Liston and Lachlan Edwards can provide that advice, you can get in touch with them on 0427 916 442 (Lachlan) or 03 5445 1067 (Siobhan) to ensure you give lawful directions on the correct grounds.