The number that should get every employer’s attention
New research from Women’s Refuge, released to RNZ on 10 September 2026, shows a genuine shift in how New Zealand workplaces handle family violence. Comparing surveys from 2019 and 2024, paid family violence leave uptake among affected women has risen from 9% to almost 34%. The share who said their workplace response made them safer climbed from 20% to 62%.
That is real progress. But the inverse is the operational warning: 38% of women who disclosed still did not feel their workplace response made them safer. That is not a welfare footnote. It is a measure of employer systems buckling under real conditions, and it is now happening far more often because more people are actually coming forward.
What the law actually requires
The Domestic Violence – Victims’ Protection Act 2018 wrote family violence leave into the Holidays Act 2003 from 1 April 2019. The statutory entitlements are 10 days of paid leave per year, the right to request short-term flexible working for up to two months, and eligibility after six months’ continuous employment. Crucially, the leave applies regardless of when the violence occurred, including before the current job started.
The employer obligations are specific and time-bound. Respond to a flexible working request in writing within 10 working days. If you want proof of family violence, ask within three working days. Protect the employee’s information, take steps to ensure workplace safety, and do not treat someone adversely because of their experience. Most of that requires preparation before a disclosure lands, not after.
What getting it wrong costs
In July 2026 the Employment Relations Authority ruled against an Auckland hospitality employer that dismissed a chef after he texted to say he had fled with his children. ERA member Matthew Piper found the employer had failed to recognise the statutory entitlement and had treated the absence as a resignation.
Piper said the employer’s failure to engage and its decision to dismiss the chef for missing work “were not actions a fair and reasonable employer could have taken”. The bill came to $22,920 – $15,000 in distress compensation and $7,920 in lost wages. The mechanism is worth understanding: a distressed text was misread as a resignation, no enquiry was made, and a front-line manager who did not know the law put the business in the ERA. That is a training failure with a five-figure price tag.
The proof trap
The most fraught area is proof. The Act lets employers request it, but as University of Auckland associate professor Carrie Leonetti told RNZ in September 2026, “the statute does not indicate what on earth proof of the family violence would look like.” She noted the myth that violence is mostly physical, so managers expect medical records or a police report.
That standard is unworkable. Only 20 to 25% of domestic violence cases are ever reported to police. Mira Taitz, DVFREE lead at Shine, told RNZ in September 2026 that most employers Shine works with are happy to state in policy that they won’t ask for proof, “because that can make the difference between people coming forward.” In April 2024, Taitz had put it more bluntly, warning via The Daily Blog that asking for proof “is unsafe because often people don’t have any proof beyond their word”.
What a prepared workplace looks like
Taitz told RNZ in September 2026 that well-run workplaces do practical things: secure carparks, blocking a perpetrator’s access to the building, and keeping disclosures confidential so perpetrators cannot extract contact details through the employer. That confidentiality is not just a Privacy Act tick-box. It is a physical safety measure.
For a small or medium business without dedicated HR, the checklist is short and cheap. Update the leave and flexible work policy to name family violence leave explicitly. Train at least one manager per site to handle a disclosure safely. Decide in advance whether to waive the proof requirement and, if so, say so in the policy. And know the deadlines: 10 working days for flexible work, three working days if you request proof.
The rising uptake is good news, evidence the entitlement is finally reaching the people it was written for. But it also means the odds that any given employer will face a disclosure this year have gone up sharply. The ERA has made clear it will not accept ignorance of the rules as a defence. The businesses that treat this as a systems question now will avoid becoming the next $22,920 cautionary tale.
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