A lot of our employees with a contract of employment for fixed hours have also been doing extra hours under casual relief agreements. They have an annual leave entitlement based on their contracted hours and have also been accruing an annual leave entitlement based on hours worked as a casual relief. As the nature of the casual relief agreement is that work does not have to be offered by the employer or worked by the employee – my feeling is this is really voluntary overtime and shouldn’t therefore attract any further a/l entitlement on top of the contractual entitlement. The only quirk is the relief work may be in a different role to the contracted one, but nether less the hours are done voluntarily.
Does anyone have experience of this situation or agree with me that it is really overtime?
We would like to stop this practice next year and it would be helpful to know what other HR professionals feel our position is.
Many thanks
Becca

Becca Cleare