Four-day weeks and nine-day fortnights in NZ: setting one up, with leave and public holidays worked through

Compressed or reduced: two different changes

Employment New Zealand describes a compressed week as weekly full-time hours worked over a shorter time period. The usual shapes are four 10-hour days, or a nine-day fortnight of eight 9-hour days and one 8-hour day, which is 80 hours a fortnight. Pay, the hourly rate and the weekly total stay the same; only the days change.

A reduced week cuts the hours, for example from 40 to 32 over four days, while keeping the pay. That is a pay rise per hour, and it changes more of the agreement: the ordinary hours, the point where overtime starts if your agreements set one, and what a normal week means for leave. If you cut both hours and pay, that is a different change again, and it needs the employee's agreement in the same way. Our article on reducing staff hours covers that case.

The two also differ in what you are testing. A compressed week asks whether the work and the cover still fit into fewer, longer days. A reduced week asks whether the same output comes from fewer hours, which you can only judge if you can see the hours worked before and after.

Long days carry their own rules. Under section 69ZD of the Employment Relations Act 2000, a work period over 8 hours earns two 10-minute paid rest breaks and a 30-minute meal break in the first 8 hours, and a further 10-minute paid rest break once the extra stretch reaches 2 hours. The work period runs from start to finish, breaks included (section 69ZC), so a 10-hour day has three paid rest breaks, not two. For anyone paid near the minimum wage, $23.95 an hour for adults from 1 April 2026, every hour of a longer day still has to be paid at that rate or more.

Changing agreements in good faith, and the 40-hour limit

An employee's hours and days are part of their employment agreement, and Employment New Zealand is clear that an employer cannot change agreed hours without the employee's agreement. So a new pattern is a variation, made by agreement and in writing, and section 4 of the Employment Relations Act applies the duty of good faith to bargaining for it. In practice that means explaining the proposal, giving people the details and time to consider them, listening to concerns such as childcare on a longer day, and accepting that some may say no.

A trial works well as a written, time-limited variation. Set out the pattern, the start and end dates, how leave and public holidays will be handled during the trial, and what happens at the end: whether people return to their old pattern automatically unless both sides agree to keep the new one.

Employees can also start the conversation. Part 6AA of the Employment Relations Act lets any employee ask in writing, at any time, for a change to their hours, days or place of work. You must reply in writing as soon as possible, within 1 month, and you can refuse only on the grounds the Act lists, such as an inability to reorganise work among existing staff or a detrimental effect on meeting customer demand. Our guide to flexible working requests explains the process from the employee's side.

On hours, section 11B of the Minimum Wage Act 1983 says an agreement must fix maximum ordinary hours at no more than 40 a week unless both sides agree to more, and where they are 40 or fewer, the parties must try to fit them into no more than 5 days. A compressed 40 hours in four days stays within that. A nine-day fortnight that averages 40 a week does too, as long as no single week's ordinary hours go over 40 without agreement: eight 9-hour days and an 8-hour day split as 45 hours one week and 35 the next needs an agreement that provides for it, so state the fortnightly pattern in the agreement itself.

Annual holidays on a nine-day fortnight

The Holidays Act 2003 gives at least four weeks' paid annual holidays after each 12 months (section 16). The entitlement is in weeks, and a week means that person's own working week. Section 17 lets you and the employee agree how the four weeks is met, based on what genuinely makes up their working week, and Employment New Zealand says that where hours per day or days per week vary, you can agree to count it in either days or hours, after explaining the consequences of each.

Counting in standard days is where it goes wrong. Take Hana, a made-up employee on eight 9-hour days and one 8-hour day a fortnight. Four of her weeks are two of her fortnights: 18 working days, or 160 hours. A payroll set to give her 20 days, as for a five-day week, hands her 2 days too many. A payroll that converts her four weeks to 160 hours but takes off 8 hours for each 9-hour day she is away makes the same mistake. Either count her leave in her own days, 18 of them, or in hours, taking off the hours she would have worked on each day of leave.

Holiday pay itself does not change: section 21 still pays the greater of her ordinary weekly pay and her average weekly earnings for each week taken.

This becomes simpler on 6 August 2028, when the Employment Leave Act 2026 replaces the Holidays Act. Annual leave will build up at no less than 0.0769 of an hour for each standard hour (section 24), and leave is taken in the standard hours the person would otherwise have worked (section 33). On 80 standard hours a fortnight, that is 6.152 hours of leave a fortnight, about 160 hours a year, and a 9-hour day off uses 9 hours. Our article on the Employment Leave Act and your hours records covers what the new law asks you to record.

A public holiday on the rostered day off

A public holiday is paid only if it falls on a day that would otherwise be a working day for that person. Section 12 of the Holidays Act lists what decides it: the employment agreement, the person's work pattern, your rosters and the reasonable expectations of both sides. Our glossary entry on the otherwise working day explains the test in brief. If the day is an otherwise working day and the person does not work, you pay their relevant daily pay (section 49). If they work it, they get at least time and a half and an alternative holiday (sections 50 and 56). If it is not an otherwise working day, Employment New Zealand says no payment is required, though you can choose to pay.

A nine-day fortnight puts that test in play several times a year. Here is a made-up example. Two staff, Hana and Ben, are on a nine-day fortnight with alternate Mondays off, written into their agreements, and their days off fall in opposite weeks. Labour Day 2026 is Monday 26 October:

• Hana is rostered to work that Monday. It is an otherwise working day, so she has a paid day off at her relevant daily pay, which is what she would have earned for her 9-hour day.
• Ben's rostered Monday off falls on 26 October. His agreed pattern says he would not have worked, so it is not an otherwise working day: no public holiday pay and no alternative holiday.

Over a year, the Monday and Friday public holidays fall unevenly, so one person can do better than another by chance. Some employers accept that, and some agree to let a person move their day off within the fortnight when it collides with a holiday, which leaves the public holiday on a working day. What you cannot do is change someone's roster to dodge a public holiday: Employment New Zealand says an employer cannot take an employee off the roster on a public holiday they would otherwise have worked to avoid giving the entitlement.

From 6 August 2028, section 13 of the Employment Leave Act makes the agreement decide: if it specifies the days, or a pattern of days, the person works, a day in that pattern is an otherwise working day, with a 50% test over the previous 13 weeks for extra days or where no days are set (section 14). The pay is for the hours they would have worked that day (section 15). Writing the fortnightly pattern into each agreement now will matter even more then.

Recording the pattern so fortnight totals stay visible

Every employer keeps a wages and time record of the hours worked each day in a pay period (section 130 of the Employment Relations Act). On a compressed pattern, the weekly total swings, so the fortnight is the number to watch: 80 hours, or whatever your agreement says, with any hours above it treated as your agreements treat extra hours. Look at the daily figures too. A 9-hour day that keeps stretching to 10 is the first sign the pattern does not fit the work, and for people near the minimum wage, it is where an underpayment starts.

During a trial, compare like with like: hours worked per person per fortnight before and after the change, the hours on each project or kind of work, and who is regularly logging more than the pattern allows. A trial judged only on how people feel at the end of it tells you less than one judged on the hours.

Team timesheets from jobtracker.co.nz shows the hours your people choose to share, by person, project and task, for any period you choose, so you can set a fortnight and see each person's total and every day's start, finish and breaks. Approvals are optional, and if you turn them on you can set them fortnightly so each person's nine days are approved together. Nobody approves their own time. It does not build rosters, keep leave balances or run payroll, so leave and public holidays are still worked out in your payroll system. It costs $6.99 a seat a month, GST included, for at least three seats.

See every fortnight while you trial it