Staff leave entitlements in a New Zealand hair salon: annual holidays, sick leave and the 2028 changes

Your part-time stylist, in on Thursdays and Fridays only, asks how much sick leave she has. The honest answer surprises most owners: the same 10 days as your full-timer, because New Zealand sick leave is not pro-rated. Your senior colourist books three weeks in Fiji, and her holiday pay has to be calculated two different ways, with you paying whichever is higher, because her commission counts. And in the background, Parliament has already passed the Act that will replace all of these rules in August 2028.

Leave in a New Zealand salon is two problems stacked on top of each other. One is legal: what the Holidays Act 2003 obliges you to provide and how each kind of leave is paid. The other is operational: a stylist's column is sold weeks ahead, so every approved week off is also a bookings problem, which is why the practical half of this subject lives in your booking calendar as much as in payroll. ViteUneCoupe, which publishes this blog, sits on that second half: it lets clients book your hair salon online for free, with 0% commission, with each stylist on their own schedule, and we will be honest further down about exactly where it helps with leave and where it does not.

Every rule below was checked on employment.govt.nz or mbie.govt.nz in October 2026. Leave law is changing (more on the Employment Leave Act 2026 at the end), individual employment agreements can add to the minimums, and this is general information for salon owners, not legal advice: confirm anything you act on against the current official guidance.

Annual holidays: 4 weeks, and the pay calculation that catches commission salons

Every employee becomes entitled to 4 weeks of paid annual holidays after 12 months of continuous employment (employment.govt.nz, annual holidays, checked in October 2026). The unit is weeks of the employee's own working pattern, not a flat number of days: 4 weeks for your Thursday-and-Friday stylist means 8 of her working days, and a full week off costs her 2 days of entitlement, not 5.

The part that catches salons is the payment. Annual holiday pay is the greater of two calculations, run every time leave is paid (employment.govt.nz, annual holiday pay, checked in October 2026):

• Ordinary weekly pay: what the employee normally receives for a week, and the official guidance explicitly includes "regular productivity or incentive-based payments (including commission or piece rates)" in it.
• Average weekly earnings: gross earnings over the 12 months before the holiday, divided by 52. Commission is part of gross earnings, so it is in this number too.

Why it matters in a salon specifically: wage-plus-commission is the standard pay structure for senior stylists, and commission moves. A colourist who had a strong year of retail and rebooking can have average weekly earnings well above her base week, and you must pay the higher figure, not the base rate your payroll software defaults to. Get the comparison wrong systematically and you are quietly underpaying every holiday, which is precisely the class of error that made the Holidays Act infamous and triggered its replacement. If you pay commission, make sure whoever runs your payroll actually performs both calculations; the structures themselves, and the minimum wage floor underneath them, are covered in our guide to hairdresser wages in New Zealand.

Two more mechanics worth knowing: leave can be taken in advance by agreement before the 12-month entitlement arrives, and unused entitled leave does not expire, it sits on your books as a liability until taken or paid out when employment ends.

Sick leave: 10 days each, not pro-rated, and what that means for a part-time team

Once an employee has worked for you for 6 months (or meets an alternative test: an average of 10 hours a week over 6 months, with at least 1 hour every week or 40 hours every month), they are entitled to 10 days of paid sick leave a year. The official guidance says it in so many words: "Sick leave entitlements are not pro-rated" (employment.govt.nz, sick leave entitlements, checked in October 2026). Unused days carry over, up to a maximum accumulation of 20 days. A sick day is paid at what the employee would have earned that day (relevant daily pay, or average daily pay where that is not practicable), and it covers their own illness or caring for a dependant.

Read that against the shape of a typical salon team, because hairdressing runs on part-timers. Sick leave is per employee, not per full-time equivalent. A deliberately hypothetical example to show the structure:

• One full-time stylist, 5 days a week: 10 sick days a year, which is 2 of her working weeks.
• Four part-time stylists, 2 days a week each: the same 1.6 full-time-equivalents of staffing carries 40 sick days a year, and each stylist's 10 days represent 5 of her own working weeks.

At 8 rostered hours a day and a hypothetical NZ$28 an hour, each stylist's full entitlement is a potential NZ$2,240 of paid non-working time a year, before the revenue side: the column booked for that day still has to be rebooked or covered. Most staff use far fewer than 10 days, and that is the honest other half of the picture, but the entitlement is the number you must be able to fund in a bad winter, and a part-time-heavy team multiplies it. It is also a number to know before you decide between one full-timer and two part-timers for the same chair, a trade-off our guide to hiring a hairdresser in New Zealand walks through.

Bereavement, family violence and parental leave in brief

Three more entitlements every salon employer should be able to answer questions about, all with the same 6-month (or hours-test) eligibility as sick leave, all checked on employment.govt.nz in October 2026:

• Bereavement leave: at least 3 days per bereavement for a death in the immediate family, and 3 days for a miscarriage or stillbirth (the employee's own, or as partner or intended primary carer). For other deaths, 1 day where you accept the employee has suffered a bereavement, judged on closeness and cultural or ceremonial responsibilities. The days do not have to be consecutive or immediate (bereavement leave).
• Family violence leave: up to 10 paid days a year for an employee affected by family violence, including historic violence. It does not carry over to the next year (family violence leave).
• Parental leave: the payments, up to 26 weeks, come from the government through Inland Revenue, not from your till; the maximum rate is NZ$811.05 a week before tax since 1 July 2026 (parental leave payments). Your obligations are mostly about the job, not the money: primary carer leave of up to 26 weeks, extended unpaid leave of up to 52 weeks in total for longer-serving employees, and in most cases keeping the role open for the return. For a salon the real project is the client side: a stylist's regulars need a planned handover to colleagues, and a 21-day notice of return date to plan the column's reopening.

Public holidays, in one paragraph

Public holidays sit beside the leave system rather than inside it: an employee who works one gets at least time and a half, plus a full alternative holiday if it was an otherwise working day for them, and one who does not work gets the day on pay. The interesting questions for a salon (whether opening at holiday rates pays, Mondayisation on a Saturday roster, Matariki and your region's anniversary day) are their own subject, covered in our guide to public holidays in a New Zealand hair salon.

Closedown periods: the Christmas rule to diarise now

Plenty of New Zealand salons trade flat out until Christmas Eve and then close until mid-January. The Holidays Act has a specific mechanism for that: an annual closedown. You can have one closedown in any 12-month period, you can require staff to take annual holidays during it, and you must give at least 14 days' notice before it starts (employment.govt.nz, annual closedowns, checked in October 2026).

Fourteen days is the legal minimum, not good practice: announce the closedown months ahead, because staff book flights and clients book December appointments around it. The trap inside the rule concerns staff who have not yet reached their 12-month annual holidays entitlement, your recent hires and first-year apprentices. You cannot make them take holidays they do not have; instead you pay them 8% of their gross earnings since they started (or since their last anniversary), less any holidays taken in advance, and their anniversary date for future entitlements moves to the closedown date. That anniversary shift is easy to miss in payroll and quietly changes when the 4 weeks arrive for every person hired mid-year.

Operationally, a closedown is the one leave event with no coverage question, but it has a booking question: close the online diary for those dates the day you announce it, and decide before you close how January reopening appointments are offered, because the first fortnight back is when the December regulars all want the same Saturday.

Cashing up a week, and the 8% rule for casuals

Two money-for-leave mechanisms exist today, each with tight conditions (both checked on employment.govt.nz in October 2026):

• Cashing up annual holidays: an employee can ask, in writing, to be paid out up to 1 week of their entitled 4 weeks each year. You can say no without giving a reason, but the request must come from them: making cash-up a condition of the job or pressuring anyone into it carries penalties of up to NZ$10,000 for an individual or NZ$20,000 for a company (cashing up annual holidays). Only entitled holidays, after the first 12 months, can be cashed up.
• Pay-as-you-go holiday pay at 8% is lawful only for an employee on a genuine fixed-term agreement of less than 12 months, or one whose work is so irregular or intermittent that providing 4 weeks of holidays is impracticable. It must be agreed in the employment agreement and shown as a separate line on every payslip (pay-as-you-go annual holiday payments). The trap: a "casual" Saturday junior who in fact works every Saturday is not irregular, and putting her on 8% does not extinguish her right to 4 weeks of holidays; you can end up owing the holidays on top of the 8% already paid.

The Employment Leave Act 2026: what changes on 6 August 2028

New Zealand has already replaced the Holidays Act. The Employment Leave Act 2026 received royal assent on 6 August 2026 and comes into force on 6 August 2028, from the start of each employee's first pay period on or after that date; until then, every rule above applies in full (employment.govt.nz, Employment Leave Act 2026, and MBIE's factsheet on the key changes, both checked in October 2026). The headline changes, as set out in MBIE's factsheet:

Notice what the hours-based sick leave accrual does to the part-time math from earlier: accrual proportional to hours worked means a 16-hour-a-week stylist will accrue roughly 32 hours of sick leave a year (0.0385 × 16 × 52) instead of today's flat 10 days, while a 40-hour full-timer still reaches the equivalent of 10 days. In plain terms, sick leave becomes pro-rated, which lowers the structural liability of a part-time-heavy salon team, and the 8% casual rate becomes 12.5%, which raises the cost of genuinely casual hours. Bereavement and family violence leave stay days-based but apply from day one. These figures come from MBIE's own material as published in October 2026; supporting regulations and payroll details are still being worked through, so treat the fine print as subject to refinement.

What should a salon do now? Nothing rash. The existing rules apply until August 2028, employment agreements get a further year, to 6 August 2029, to be brought into line, and payroll software vendors will carry most of the mechanical change. The genuinely useful preparation is boring: keep clean records of hours actually worked per employee (the new system runs on hours, and messy records are what made the old Act expensive), make sure commission is correctly flowing into today's holiday pay calculations, and review any "casual" arrangements that are casual in name only before a 12.5% rate makes the question dearer. Payroll record-keeping and the adjacent employer duties are covered in our guide to KiwiSaver and salon payroll in New Zealand.

Leave happens in your booking calendar too

One category of worker is absent from everything above: a genuine chair renter accrues no leave from you at all, because she is her own business; paying a renter "holidays" is evidence the arrangement is really employment, a boundary explored in our guide to chair rental in a New Zealand hair salon.

For employees, every entitlement in this article eventually lands in the same place: a column that clients can book weeks ahead must stop being bookable for the leave dates, the moment the leave is approved. Approve January in the payroll conversation and forget the booking page, and the booking page sells January solid. The roster-side discipline, including sudden sick-day triage, is covered in our guide to staff rostering in a New Zealand hair salon, so here is just the tool-shaped point, stated honestly. ViteUneCoupe is not a leave, payroll or compliance tool: it does not track balances, run the two holiday pay calculations or know the Employment Leave Act exists. What it does, on its free plan with unlimited bookings and 0% commission permanently, is give each stylist her own schedule on the salon's booking page, so approved leave becomes closed availability in one edit and no client can book a stylist who is in Fiji; the client database then gives you the names and contact details when an unexpected sick day means rebooking a full column. The Standard plan, from 29 € excluding tax per month with no commitment, adds email confirmations, reminders and calendar sync; it is billed in euros, so the New Zealand dollar amount on your statement moves with the exchange rate and your bank may add a foreign-transaction fee, and reminders are email only, with no SMS on any plan.

Frequently asked questions

Do part-time salon staff get the full 10 days of sick leave in New Zealand?

Yes. Under the Holidays Act rules in force until 6 August 2028, sick leave is not pro-rated: a stylist working 2 days a week gets the same 10 days a year as a full-timer, once she has 6 months' service or meets the hours test, and can accumulate up to 20 days. From August 2028 the Employment Leave Act 2026 moves sick leave to hours-based accrual proportional to hours worked.

How do I calculate holiday pay for a stylist paid commission?

Run both statutory calculations and pay the greater: ordinary weekly pay (which includes regular commission) or average weekly earnings (gross earnings for the previous 12 months divided by 52, which also captures commission). A stylist whose commission has grown over the year will often have average weekly earnings above her ordinary week, and that higher figure is what the law requires.

Can I make staff take annual leave when the salon closes over Christmas?

Yes, through an annual closedown: one per 12-month period, with at least 14 days' written notice, during which staff with entitled holidays must use them. Staff who have not yet reached 12 months' service are instead paid 8% of gross earnings since starting, and their entitlement anniversary moves to the closedown date. Announce it months ahead in practice, and close the online diary for those dates the same day.

Can a stylist ask to be paid out instead of taking holidays?

Under the current rules, an employee can request in writing to cash up at most 1 week of their entitled 4 weeks per year. The employer may decline without reasons, but must never pressure an employee to cash up; penalties apply. From 6 August 2028 the Employment Leave Act 2026 allows cashing up to 25% of the accrued annual leave balance per 12 months.

Do casual salon staff get holiday pay in NZ?

A genuinely irregular casual, or someone on a fixed term under 12 months, can be paid holiday pay as 8% of gross earnings on top of wages, if the employment agreement says so and the payslip shows it separately. A "casual" with a regular pattern, like every Saturday, is not eligible for pay-as-you-go and keeps the normal 4-week entitlement. From August 2028 this mechanism is replaced by a 12.5% leave compensation payment on casual hours.

What is the Employment Leave Act 2026 and when does it start?

It is the law replacing the Holidays Act 2003, passed with royal assent on 6 August 2026 and in force from 6 August 2028. Annual leave and sick leave will accrue in hours from day one (0.0769 and 0.0385 hours per standard hour respectively, sick leave capped at 160 hours), casual hours will carry a 12.5% leave compensation payment, and existing balances convert at the transition. Until then, the current Holidays Act rules apply unchanged.