This section describes some configuration prerequisites and information that you should consider before setting up Long Service Leave (LSL) functionality in Dayforce.
- Role Feature
- Entitlements
- Employee Property
- Continuous Employment Start Date
- Employment Status Reasons
- Employee Location
Assign role access for the appropriate roles to the Long Service Leave subfeature. The feature is located in System Admin > Roles in the Features tab under the following navigation path:
- Pay Setup
- Pay Setup
- Long Service Leave
- Pay Setup
You might need to configure a new entitlement or entitlement policy for your organization that caters to your LSL requirements. Depending on your requirements, you might need to perform this step before you configure an LSL policy in Pay Setup > Long Service Leave. See Entitlements.
Pay Setup > Entitlements contains functionality that might be more appropriate to configure after you’ve created an LSL policy. For example, there are entitlement rules and qualifiers that support LSL, and you might need to configure them in your entitlement policy depending on your configuration. The following configuration tools that support LSL are available in Pay Setup > Entitlements:
| Configuration Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Recurrences |
In the Recurrences tab, you can configure recurrences to start based on an employee’s LSL eligibility date. To do so, select Long Service Leave Eligibility Date in the Start Date Type drop-down list. Note: Dayforce uses your employees’ first LSL eligibility date when calculating recurrences. |
| Award Average Work Rule |
You can configure this rule to award leave pay to employees based on their continuous employment length. Select Anniversary Date in the Period type drop-down list, and select Continuous Employment Start Date in the Anniversary date type drop-down list. |
| LSL Service Period Accrual Rule |
This rule examines employees’ LSL policies and evaluates whether they’re eligible to continue accruing LSL balances or whether they’ve reached their limit for the year. |
| Long Service Leave Eligibility Date Qualifier |
This qualifier examines whether LSL eligibility dates are contained within an evaluation period. You can configure the qualifier so that employees qualify for the associated rule when the qualifier detects an LSL eligibility date, or the opposite behavior where employees don’t qualify when an LSL eligibility date is detected. You need to configure this qualifier if you’ve configured your LSL policy so that employees can continue accruing LSL after meeting your organization’s eligibility threshold (that is, after they qualify for LSL). This qualifier is required to trigger entitlement rules that affect qualification for your employees’ subsequent LSL eligibility dates. |
| Long Service Leave Termination Payout Qualifier |
You can configure this qualifier to qualify employees for the associated entitlement rule when their termination date is the same as or later than their Long Service Leave (LSL) termination payout date. |
| Seniority Qualifier |
You can configure this qualifier to limit entitlement rules to apply only to employees with a specific seniority. You can configure this qualifier to begin determining seniority eligibility from a specific type of start date, including an employee’s LSL eligibility date. To configure the qualifier in this way, select Long Service Leave Eligibility Date in the Start Date drop-down list. Note: If your LSL policy supports more than one LSL eligibility date, this qualifier can detect only employees’ first eligibility date. |
If necessary, you can credit or debit an employee’s LSL continuous employment length (in days) if it should be higher or lower because of prior employment or other factors. You do this by configuring an employee property in the employee’s profile in People.
In People, go to Employment > Employee Properties and click Add. Configure the following fields:
- Property: Select Long Service Leave Prior Service Days.
- Effective From: Specify the effective start date for the credit or debit.
- Effective To: (Optional) Specify the effective end date for the credit or debit.
- Value: Enter the number of days of service that should be added to the employee’s accrued total. For example, say that an employee has worked for an organization for 90 days, which is also their current continuous employment length. If their manager enters
180in this field, their continuous employment length would increase to 270 days. - If the employee’s continuous employment length should decrease, enter a negative value.
Continuous Employment Start Date
Important: This field is available only for employees assigned to an Australia or New Zealand pay group.
To calculate an employee’s LSL eligibility date, Dayforce requires that employees have a starting point from which LSL is calculated from. The Continuous Employment Start Date field contains the start date from which the employee’s service is calculated as continuous, based on their LSL policy configuration. If a break in their employment continuity occurs because of a long-term leave or employment status change, Dayforce updates the start date in this field to reflect the change. This field contains a calculated, read-only start date and can’t be manually edited. This field is located in People in the Employment > Employment Settings screen, in the Key Information tab.
Because this is a calculated date, the initial assignment of a continuous service start date for a new employee is determined by the following:
- The effective start date of the first active employee status record.
- The original hire date.
- The effective start date of the first work assignment that has an associated country or state. The work assignment is needed to determine which country or state the employee worked in so that the relevant LSL policy can be used.
For example, when there’s a difference in the above dates, the Continuous Employment Start Date field returns the earliest date where all three records agree there is an active service period. However, after employment begins, this date is also modified by the LSL policy settings in the Leave Categories and Employee Statuses subtabs. Depending on these settings and the leave period that the employee takes, this might:
- Move the start date of the continuous employment period based on the leave that’s been taken.
- Break continuous service and reset the start date of the continuous employment period. This could occur because of a termination or rehire, or a defined leave type exceeding a nominated threshold.
When an employee doesn’t start on their planned hire date, you can do one of the following to alter the date:
- If the date is earlier, you need to update the original hire date, the employment status start date, and the start date for the work assignment. You can update these as follows:
- Update the Original Hire Date field in People in the Employment > Employment Settings screen, in the Key Information tab.
- Update the Effective From field in People in the Employment > Employment Settings screen, in the Employment Status tab.
- Update the Effective From field in People in the Work > Work Assignments screen.
- If the date is later, you also need to update the same dates as above, but Dayforce doesn’t let you move a date to a later date unless you set the employment status to Pre-Start. To change the employment status, first select the Pre-Start option in People in the Employment > Employment Settings in the Employment Status tab, in the Employment Status drop-down list. Next, create a new employment status record on the date that you want to move it to. Lastly, you must update the original hire date and the work assignment start date as mentioned in the steps above.
- Rerun the Calculate Long Service Leave Entitlement background job to recalculate the continuous employment start date.
Dayforce contains default employment statuses and employment status reasons. An employment status represents an employee’s current availability. For example, new, unavailable employees are assigned the Pre-Start status, available employees are assigned the Active status, and terminated employees are assigned the Terminated status. An employment status reason represents why an employee’s status or details change. Employment status reason changes include position and compensation changes, and taking leave from work.
Before you set up LSL functionality, you might need to add or update employment status reasons in HR Admin > Employment Status Reason. Depending on how you configure your LSL policy, employment status reasons can affect LSL eligibility.
See Employment Status Reasons.
LSL requirements can differ in many states and territories. If your LSL policies contain multiple regional records with different requirements, your employees’ location details should be accurate and up to date so that their LSL eligibility is calculated correctly.
When calculating LSL eligibility, Dayforce uses the org location address of an employee’s primary work assignment to determine their location. However, if an employee is virtual or has a work location override, Dayforce uses these settings to determine their location. An employee’s virtual status and work location override, if configured, are available in their employee profile, in the Work > Work Assignments screen of People. Expand a work assignment record to view these settings:
You can hover the cursor over the help icons next to the Virtual and Work Location Override settings to read more information about how Dayforce uses these settings in LSL calculations.
Dayforce determines an employee’s location during LSL evaluation as follows:
| Configuration | Virtual | Work Location Override | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| An employee is not virtual and doesn’t have a work location override. | No | No | Dayforce uses the org location address of their primary work assignment to determine their location. |
| An employee is not virtual and has a work location override. | No | Yes | Dayforce uses the employee’s work location override to determine their location. |
| An employee is virtual and doesn’t have a work location override. | Yes | No | Dayforce uses the employee’s residential address (that is, their virtual location) to determine their location. |
| An employee is virtual and has a work location override. | Yes | Yes |