I was chatting to an old school friend some years ago who ran an aviation business in NZ, he was doing his books one year when it dawned on him that he was effectively paying a years wages (holiday pay) for staff leave and to him it felt like he was actually paying for 13 staff but only getting the benefit of 12. At that point he decided to sell,the business to a larger group, reckons it was the best days work he ever did.
Small business is severely disadvantaged in this (leave payments) regard I know that in my business, someone going on leave severely hamstrings productivity, our options are to hire temp staff (not ideal and often worse than going without) For this reason we need to become much larger more quickly which in some ways only exacerbates the problem, annual leave is already very generous in Australia.
Long service leave IMHO is a rort and should be done away with , but good luck with that idea :-(
Long service leave has its origins in colonial Australia (and other colonies) where government employees after a certain period of service away from home (England) were granted extended leave to allow for the long distance in travel and time to enjoy time with family back home.
I kinda get that, but in these modern days where 24 hours will get you to the other side of the world I think it’s a farce.
But hey, I’m just a small business owner, what would I know !