Summarise with AI
When one is earned
Two conditions have to be met together. The employee must work on a public holiday, and that day must have been an otherwise working day for them — a day they would have worked had it not been a public holiday.
If both are true, they earn an alternative holiday. If they work a public holiday that would not otherwise have been a working day, they are still paid at least time and a half for the hours worked, but no alternative day is owed. The distinction turns entirely on the otherwise-working-day test, which is why that test is worth getting right rather than guessing.
A whole day, not a pro rata one
An alternative holiday is a full paid day off, regardless of how long the employee actually worked on the public holiday. Someone called in for a two-hour shift on Waitangi Day earns the same whole day as someone who worked ten hours. There is no proportional version of it.
When it is taken, it is paid at relevant daily pay or average daily pay — the same basis as sick and bereavement leave, not the basis used for annual holidays.
Why it is a liability, not a rate
Most payroll systems handle the time and a half correctly, because it is a rate applied to a shift. The alternative day is different: it is an entitlement that has to be recorded when it is earned and carried until it is used. It does not expire. After twelve months an employer can require it to be taken at a reasonable time, and an employee can ask for it to be paid out. Whatever is left is paid out on termination.
A business rostering through eleven public holidays and a regional anniversary day can accrue a great many of these without one appearing anywhere in the accounts. Recording the day at the moment
it is earned — rather than reconstructing it when somebody resigns — is the whole job. Our free
roster templates carry a separate ALT code for exactly this reason.
