Now is a prudent time to update you all that as an employer you must give your employees time off to vote in the general (parliamentary) election on polling day (Saturday 14 October) if:

they are (or are qualified to be) registered as an elector of the district where the election is, and

they haven’t had a reasonable opportunity to vote before starting work.

The amount of time an employee can have off to vote depends on whether they are required for essential work or services.

Unless your employees are in essential service that have to work after 3pm, you must allow them to leave work no later than 3pm, for the rest of the day without deductions from their pay.

If they don’t have to work after 3pm on the polling day for essential work or services, you must allow your employees reasonable time to get to vote, therefore 3pm is the latest for the rest of the day without deductions from their pay for this time off work.

If they are required to work for essential work or services after 3pm on the polling day you must allow them to leave work for a reasonable time to vote. You can’t make any deductions from their pay for time up to 2 hours that they spend off work.

If you do not comply to these regulations, you could be fined $1000 per employee.

If you have any questions on how this might relate to you, do not hesitate to get in touch.

Vaccine Certificates

Little information has been released about vaccination certificates and how this system will work when close contact businesses such as hairdressers and hospitality can reopen under the traffic light system.

What we do know is that businesses which are considered to be ‘high risk’ will be required to use the vaccine certificate system, and while the system will be optional for some other businesses, it will not be available for every business.

After a total of 49 days in lockdown in Auckland, the COVID-19 elimination strategy looks to be all but abandoned.

Isolating in times of COVID