Skai Solutions runs the same order of operations every time: cover the floor, then decide who is answering the phone, because in New Zealand every eligible employee gets 10 paid sick days a year and in Australia casuals get none.
The two countries answer this very differently, and the difference falls hardest on exactly the people hospitality employs most: part-timers and casuals.
| New Zealand | Australia | |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time entitlement | 10 days a year | 10 days a year |
| Part-time entitlement | 10 days, NOT pro-rated | Pro rata, 1 twenty-sixth of ordinary hours |
| Casual entitlement | Qualifies on the hours test | None paid |
| Qualifying period | 6 months | From day one, accrues progressively |
| Carry over cap | 20 days | No cap |
Sources: Employment New Zealand, managing sick leave and the Fair Work Ombudsman on paid sick and carer's leave, which sits under sections 95 to 97 of the Fair Work Act 2009.
The New Zealand rule that catches people out is that the 10 days are not pro-rated. A dishwasher who works Friday and Saturday nights gets the same 10 days as a full-time chef. That was deliberate. The minimum went from 5 days to 10 on 24 July 2021 and the entitlement has never been proportional to hours.
The Australian rule that catches people out is the opposite. A casual gets nothing paid, which in a venue running a mostly casual floor means a sick Saturday costs the employee a shift and costs you a body, and neither of you has a fund to draw on. That is worth knowing before you build a roster that assumes people will drag themselves in.
In New Zealand this is a rule almost no operator knows and it reverses at the 3 day mark.
If the employee has been sick for less than 3 days and you want proof, you must ask as soon as possible and you pay their costs, including the doctor's visit. If they have been sick for 3 or more days in a row, they pay. And the 3 days are counted as calendar days, not workdays, so a scheduled day off in the middle of the run still counts toward it.
The practical consequence: if you are going to ask for a certificate, decide on day one, not day three. Ask on the Tuesday and you are paying. Wait until the Thursday and they are.
In Australia the employer can request reasonable evidence and there is no equivalent cost-shifting rule, so this is one place where the two systems genuinely diverge rather than just differing in numbers. If you run venues on both sides of the Tasman, that is a policy you cannot copy across.
1. Move someone who is already rostered. Free, and it is what everyone does first. The cost is hidden: the person you moved is now doing two jobs, and one of them is the one nobody notices being dropped. Usually the phone.
2. Call in an off-roster staff member. Costs a shift at ordinary rates in New Zealand, where there is no statutory weekend loading. In Australia the same call on a Sunday costs considerably more because the award sets penalty rates, which we have set out in full in our guide to hospitality award rates in Australia. Same problem, two very different bills. Note also that you cannot solve a hole in the roster with a very short shift: the Restaurant Industry Award sets a two hour floor for casuals and three hours for part timers, and New Zealand comes at it from the other direction by making a cancelled shift payable in full unless your agreement says otherwise. Both rules are on our page covering minimum shift hours in hospitality.
3. Cut the service back. Close the upstairs section, take the specials off, stop taking walk-ins. Costs revenue rather than wages, and it is the option most operators reach for last when it should often be second.
4. Trade short and protect the phone. Accept you are down a person on the floor and make sure the one thing that can still bring money in the door is covered. This is the option that requires having set something up before the phone call at 3pm, which is why almost nobody has it.
None of these is wrong. The mistake is doing them in the wrong order, which nearly always means options 1 and 2 get exhausted before anyone thinks about what has stopped happening while everyone was busy covering.
The wage saving from being one person down is easy to see. It is one shift at your local rate. In New Zealand, where the adult minimum wage is NZ$23.95 an hour from 1 April 2026 and the industry average was NZ$27.84 an hour in the 2025 Restaurant Association survey, an eight hour floor shift sits somewhere around NZ$190 to NZ$225. We have the full breakdown by role on our page about hospitality wages in New Zealand.
The cost on the other side is harder to see, which is exactly why it wins the argument by default. Here is a worked example using Skai Solutions' own assumptions, so you can substitute your own. Say your phone rings 12 times during a Friday service and normally 2 of those become bookings at an average spend of NZ$45 a head for a table of 2. That is NZ$180 of covers. If nobody is free to answer and half of those callers go elsewhere, you have saved roughly NZ$200 in wages and given away roughly NZ$90 in covers on that shift alone, before you count the regular who tried to book and could not.
Those inputs are assumptions, not measurements, and we say so plainly. Put your own call volume and average spend in and the shape of the answer usually holds: the wage saving is real and one-off, the lost calls are smaller per shift and repeat every time.
This is the same structural problem behind the broader hospitality staffing squeeze, and it is why a phone that answers itself is worth more to an understaffed venue than a fully staffed one.
Some weeks you are three people down and there is no clever answer. When that happens, protect two things in this order: the food that is already ordered, and the calls that are still coming in. Everything else can degrade.
The practical setup is a divert on your main number that triggers after four or five rings, so the phone still rings in the venue first and only falls through when nobody gets to it. That way a fully staffed night behaves exactly as it does now, and a short-staffed one does not silently lose bookings. Skai Solutions sets that up in five days, and our New Zealand pricing is flat monthly, which matters here specifically because the shifts when you need it most are the shifts you can least afford a per-call bill.
And the honest limit: if your phone mostly carries supplier calls and enquiries rather than bookings and orders, a basic message-taking plan covers this for a fraction of the price, and it is not us.
Covering a sick call is a roster change, and the award treats it as one. What notice you owe, and why a rostered off employee can lawfully decline your phone call, are on staff roster rules for Australian restaurants.
Skai Solutions answers every call at the same price whether you are fully staffed or two people down.
Book a Free DemoOne thing worth checking before the next absence: if the person who called in sick is your food safety supervisor, that is a compliance question as well as a roster one, because the supervisor has to be reachable while you trade.
10 paid days a year once they have worked continuously for 6 months, or for 6 months averaging 10 hours a week with at least 1 hour every week or 40 hours every month. It is not pro-rated, so a part-timer working three shifts a week gets the same 10 days as a full-timer. Unused days carry over to a maximum balance of 20.
10 days a year for full-time employees and pro rata for part-time, calculated as 1 twenty-sixth of ordinary hours in a year. A 38 hour full-timer accrues 76 hours a year. Casual employees get no paid sick leave at all.
Yes in both countries. In New Zealand, if the employee has been sick for less than 3 days you must ask as soon as possible and you pay for the certificate. If they have been sick 3 or more calendar days in a row, they pay. Those 3 days are calendar days, so a rostered day off in the middle still counts.
Under the Holidays Act 2003 it can, because the Act describes the entitlement in days rather than hours. You can agree with an employee to record it in part days or hours instead, as long as the total is equivalent to at least 10 full days a year.
Yes. The Employment Leave Act replaces the Holidays Act in New Zealand in August 2028. Until it starts you follow the current Holidays Act rules.