This Glossary is drawn from Industrial Relations Victoria’s Work and Family Balance Manual (2007). It contains terms relevant to work and family balance.

A

Adoption leave:
Available to adopting parents, provisions for adoption leave are the same as parental leave but the age of the child being adopted may affect the length of time the parent can be on leave.

Advice and referral service: 
A free service for staff providing refferals and advice on issues relating to child care and aged care. This advice could include information regarding nursing home placement for an elderly relative or contact numbers for child care vacancies or advice on the behaviour management of a child.

After hours dependent care:
Payment for after hours dependent care occurs when an employer requires an employee to attend work, training or a meeting outside the employee’s normal hours of work. The employer reimburses the additional expenses incurred by the employee for the care of a dependent.

Allowances:
Payments made to employees that are in addition to their ordinary wage rate. Allowances are paid to compensate employees for some particular aspect of the job which is considered to cause the employee additional expense or discomfort, for example, working in hot, dirty and confined spaces, subjecting clothing to undue wear and tear, or having to live away from the employee’s usual home in order to attend work.

Annual leave (or recreation leave): 
Paid leave that is usually four weeks each year of full-time work, pro rata for part-time employees.

Annual leave in single days:
The provision of annual leave in single days enables workers to take annual leave one day at a time rather than in blocks of a week or longer.

Antenatal (pre-natal) leave:
Enables pregnant women and, in many cases, their partners to attend routine medical appointments associated with the pregnancy. This leave is separate from, and in addition to, parental and personal leave.

Award:
A legally binding document that specifies the minimum conditions under which an employee covered by that document is employed. It covers matters such as wages, leave and overtime. Awards cover many, but not all, Australian employees.

B

Banking rostered days:
Enables employees, by agreement, to accumulate their rostered days off to use at some time in the future. Often there is a limit regarding how many rostered days can be banked.

Bereavement leave:
See Compassionate leave.

C

Career break:
A negotiated leave without pay arrangement that enables the employee to obtain a break from their usual duties to pursue personal development or carry out family commitments. Employees will have the expectation of returning to their substantive job once the career break is over.

Carer’s leave:
Granted to an employee to enable him or her to care for an ill or injured family member or with consent of the employer to provide caring supervision. Employees may be legally entitled to such leave under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) and/or under agreements or awards applying to teh workplace.

Carer’s room, also known as a family room:
A room or work area set aside in the workplace where employees can continue to work while also caring for family members. It is used when normal care arrangements break down, or when children are unable to attend child care or school due to a minor illness.

Casual work:
Temporary work or work with changeable hours, which does not offer the certainty of a permanent job. Casual employees are not entitled to some of the benefits associated with continuous employment (such as paid sick leave) although they are entitled to a casual loading in lieu of these benefits.

Ceremonial leave:
Often interchangeable with cultural leave. Sometimes this leave is only available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in order to enable them to meet cultural obligations and to participate in ceremonial activities.

Collective bargaining:
A method of negotiation to settle industrial disputes between employees and employers, where the employer negotiates with employees as a group rather than as individuals.

Compassionate or bereavement leave:
Leave from work after the death or serious or sudden incapacity of a family member. Employees may be legally entitled to such leave under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) and/or under agreements or awards applying to the workplace.

Contract of employment:
An agreement between employer and employee that is enforceable by law. Every employee has a contract of employment with their employer, even if it is not written down (it could be verbal). Contracts of employment can be supplemented by workplace agreements registered in the federal system.

Cultural leave:
Leave to enable an employee who needs to be absent from work to be involved in their community’s cultural or religious activities, such as Yom Kippur, Greek Easter or the last day of Ramadan.

CV:

See Resume

D

Dependent:
A person who requires the care of another to manage their health and general wellbeing, for example a child or a frail parent. A person does not have to be totally incapacitated or dependent to be defined as dependent for the purpose of work and family balance provisions but they must require the assistance of others to manage some aspects of daily living, for example attending medical appointments.

Discrimination:
Occurs when someone is treated unfairly or less favourably in the same or similar circumstances because, for example, of their gender or parental status. It may be direct or indirect. Direct discrimination occurs when an individual or class of individuals is discriminated against because of a characteristic they have that is protected by law. Indirect discrimination occurs whent there is a rule, policy, practice or procedure that is the same for everyone, but has an unequql or disproportionate impact on a specific group of people because of a characteristic they have that is protected by the, and the rule, policy or procedure is not reasonable.

E

Early closing:
Closing the workplace early so that people can leave early. For example, prior to significant community or cultural events, such as Christmas or at the end of the week, allowing staff members to leave work early in order to be with family or manage other commitments, such as shopping or cooking.

Employee assistance program:
An employee assistance program assists employees and their immediate families with personal or work related problems and concerns. In a majority of cases an external counseling agency provides the services on a fee for service basis.

Employee choice rostering or self-rostering:
A system in which employees take responsibility for the designation of shift arrangements, in consultation with management and within set guidelines.

Employer sponsored child care:
Refers to a broad range of child care options including the organisation owning and administering a child care facility for the children of employees or subsidising the care of employees’ children by external agencies.

Enterprise agreement:
A negotiated deal about the conditions under which employees are employed within a single business. An enterprise agreement is negotiated by an employer and employees or by their union.

Entitlements:
Any rights which employees have access to at work through an award, contract, agreement or legislation, such as holidays, sick leave and allowances.

Exceptional circumstances leave (miscellaneous or extraordinary leave):
This leave may be granted to employees to assist them cope with an extraordinary circumstance or event in their family life. This leave covers circumstances not covered in scope or length of time by any other type of leave. Exceptional circumstances leave is often used to extend bereavement leave or carer’s leave should a member of an employee’s family become seriously ill or incapacitated. It is also used to cover one-off significant events, such as a fire in the home.

F

Family:

Includes any person dependent on the employee for care or support such as a relation by blood (child, sibling, grandparent), marriage or domestic partnerships, adoption, fostering or traditional kinship without discrimination as to race or sexual preference.

Family friendly provisions and policies:
Designed to help staff to balance work and family responsibilities, including children, family members and others who have disabilities and/or are elderly.

Family leave:
See Carer’s leave.

Family room:
See Carer’s room

Flexi-time:
Flexible working hours enable employees to start and finish work between a flexible range of agreed hours as long as they work a set number of hours each day or week. For example, employees required to work an eight hour day with a half-hour lunch break, may be able to start work at any time between 7.00am and 9.30am finish any time between 3.30pm and 6.00pm.

Foster parent leave:
Leave to enable an employee who is a foster parent to settle a child into their home.

Full-time work:
Usually a working week of 35 hours or more.

H

Home based work:
See telecommuting.

I

Indirect discrimination:
See Discrimination

In Vitro Fertilisation leave (IVF leave):
Leave enabling eligible employees to attend routine medical appointments associated with IVF treatment.

J

Job description (also known as position description):

A document which describes the purpose, expected activities and responsibilities of a particular job.

Job share: 
A form of permanent part-time work in which two, or possibly more, people share the responsibilities, hours, salary and benefits of one full-time job. The performance of job share partners is evaluated separately even though they share the duties of the one job.

K

Keep in touch program:

Keep in touch programs provide a systematic way of keeping in contact with employees who are on extended leave such as parental leave or extended sick leave. Employees remain connected to their workplace and reintegrate more easily into the workplace when they return from extended leave.

Key selection criteria:
These are a list of skills, experience, qualifications and attributes the employer wants to see in a prospective employee. Sometimes they might categorise these into essential (must haves) and desirable.

L

Lactation breaks:
Regular breaks provided to nursing mothers during working hours to either breastfeed a baby if the child is nearby or to express breast milk to be stored for later consumption.

Leave loading: 
An additional loading paid in addition to normal wages by an employer to an employee when the employee takes annual (recreation) leave.

Leave without pay:
Leave provided to an employee without pay.

Long service leave:
Paid leave awarded to employees in recognition of a period of service to an employer. The length of service required to become entitled to this entitlement varies between awards and workplaces.

M

Make up time:
Where an employee works a reduced number of hours without loss of pay, and then makes up those hours at a later date during an agreed spread of hours.

O

Overtime:
The time worked that is in excess of an employee’s regularly scheduled working hours. These extra hours of work may attract penalty ("overtime") rates. This means that the overtime rate of pay is higher than the rate of pay the employee gets when working their usual scheduled hours. The Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) provides employees cannot be required or requested to work more than 38 hours per week plus reasonable additional hours.

P

Parental leave:
Parental leave is a collective term that can be used to describe maternity, paternity (partner) and adoption leave. It can also include foster care, child rearing and permanent care order leave. Parental leave can be paid or unpaid leave.

Part day absences:
Occurs when employees take less than a whole day of leave, by agreement, to assist in balancing work and family responsibilities. The employee may take this time off as leave (for example carer’s leave or sick leave, or as a period of unpaid leave), or they may use make up time to replace the hours lost.

Part-time work:

Part-time workers are permanent employees who have a set number of weekly working hours less than full-time employees. Part-time workers receive the same entitlements as full-time workers but on a pro rata (proportional) basis.

Paternity (partner) leave:

Leave taken by the partner of the mother of a child or primary carer when the child is newborn or, in the case of adoption, when the child begins to live with the adoptive parents.

Personal/carer’s leave:

Comprises sick leave, carer’s leave and bereavement.

Pre-natal leave:

See Antenatal leave.

Purchased leave:

A system that enables an employee to purchase an additional period of leave during the course of a year. For example, if working a 48/52 purchased leave arrangement, the employee will receive 48 weeks of their annual salary spread over the 52 weeks of the year (effectively sacrificing four weeks' pay), and in exchange will recieve an additional four weeks' leave over that one-year period. Other variations of this leave include 46/52 or 50/52.

R

Request driven rostering:

Where the roster takes into account the needs of individual employees. Employees are expected to inform their employer about when they want to work and when it would be difficult for them to work andthe employer will make genuine efforts to accommodate the individual needs of employees.

Resume (also known as a CV/Curriculum Vitae):
A document setting out work experience, skills, training, qualifications and career plans. This could include references, experiences and skills attained in paid or unpaid employment, or outside employment (for example, while caring for children).

S

Sick leave:

Authorised absence from work granted to employees when they are ill, injured, or need to see a medical professional or recieve a medical service.

Shift work:

A period of work that is performed outside the normal spread of hours, particularly when a factory or business operates on a 24 hour basis or has extended hours, such as a hotel.

T

Telecommuting/home based work:

Telecommuting, also known as home-based work, involves arrangements where employees perform their usual work duties away from the regular workplace. An employee can telecommute for all or part of their working week or even for part-days, depending on the circumstances involved.

Time off in lieu:

A time in lieu arrangement enables an employee to elect not to be paid for overtime and to take an equivalent amount of time off at a later stage by agreement with their employer.

W

Work life balance:
Refers to achieving a balance between all of the aspects in an individual’s life including work, family, friends, health, relaxation, and community activities. There is a vast array of arrangements that could be implemented in the workplace in order to facilitate work-life balance.

Workplace agreements:
Official documents negotiated by employers and employees regarding pay and conditions. There are varying forms of workplace agreements but the following, with the exception of a common law agreement, are lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate.

• Non-union collective agreement: A written agreement applying to more than one employee in a workplace (or sometimes more than one workplace), that is negotiated between the employer/s and the employees.
• Union collective agreement: A written agreement applying to more than one employee in a workplace (or sometimes more than one workplace), that is negotiated between the employer/s and a union representing the employees. Non-union employees may also be represented at the negotiations by employee representatives.
• Common law agreement (or contract): A written and/or verbal agreement between an individual employee and the employer regarding pay and conditions. The agreement is negotiated between the employer and employee and is not lodged with, or ratified by, any governmentauthority. Terms in common law agreements that undermine terms in a workplace agreements cannot undermine terms in workplace agreement or award, or the minimum conditions garunteed by the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth).
• Individual Transitional Employment Agreement (ITEA): A temporarily available written agreement between an employer and an employee, setting out the terms and conditions of the employee's employment. ITEAs are available during the transition to the new federal workplace relations system (scheduled for 2010).