Statement of Service & Reference Letter, Done Right

In Australian practice, the statement of service (also called a certificate of service or employment verification letter) records the employer's legal name and ABN, the employee's start and finish dates, the position held, and the basis of employment, whether full time, part time, casual or fixed term. Most versions add average ordinary hours per week, because skills assessing authorities generally reject letters without them. It contains no judgement about performance and says nothing about why the employment ended unless the employee asks. Every line should match payroll and the termination record, which is why a statement of service belongs with the other Australian employment document templates you use across the employment relationship.

The reference letter is a different instrument. It is a signed opinion from someone who supervised the work, covering reliability, competence and conduct. No general statute obliges an Australian employer to write one, which makes it voluntary but not risk free: a reference can found a claim by the employee if it is unfairly damaging, or by the new employer if it is misleadingly generous. Neither document is the Employment Separation Certificate that Services Australia asks employers to complete for income support claims. Our template treats the statement as routine and the reference as a separate, deliberate decision.

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) does not require you to give a departing employee a reference. What it imposes is record keeping. Under s 535, a national system employer must keep employee records for seven years, including the basis of employment and, on termination, how the employment ended. Regulation 3.42 of the Fair Work Regulations 2009 (Cth) gives employees and former employees a right to inspect and copy those records; for a former employee, the employer must post a copy within 14 days of the request. On appeal in Hisense Australia Pty Ltd v Naskovski [2026] FCA 20, the Federal Court held that an employment contract is not itself an "employee record" for that purpose. The Fair Work Ombudsman fact sheet on record-keeping and pay slip obligations lists what those records must contain. A statement that contradicts your own records becomes evidence against you, and s 535(4) prohibits keeping records the employer knows are false or misleading. Some older awards, state awards and enterprise agreements also carry a statement of employment clause requiring the employer, on request, to confirm the period of employment and the work performed.

The reference sits in the general law. Honest references attract qualified privilege at common law and under s 30 of the Defamation Act 2005 (NSW) and its uniform equivalents, and where the 2021 Model Defamation Provisions apply, the claimant must prove serious harm under s 10A. Negligent misstatement cuts both ways: the High Court's approach in Shaddock & Associates Pty Ltd v Parramatta City Council (No 1) (1981) 150 CLR 225 protects a recipient who relies on the letter, and Spring v Guardian Assurance plc [1995] 2 AC 296 is treated as persuasive on the duty owed to the employee. A reference that mentions sick leave, parental leave or a workers compensation claim also invites discrimination or victimisation proceedings. On privacy, small businesses below the turnover threshold sit outside the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and for everyone else the exemption in s 7B(3) covers only acts directly related to the employment, so written consent before you speak to a prospective employer is the safer course, consistent with an Australian privacy policy drafted to APP 1.

The most common trigger is a plain request at exit. An employee who resigns usually asks for a statement of service with the final payslip, and issuing it with your resignation acceptance and exit pack closes the file in one step. Redundancy is the second large category: employees need proof of service within days to secure interviews, and a prompt statement is one of the cheapest goodwill gestures available during a restructure. After a dismissal handled through a termination letter built on s 117 notice rules, a factual statement of service with no reference attached is the standard, defensible response.

Migration and professional recognition drive the next group of requests. Engineers Australia and the Australian Computer Society expect an employment reference on letterhead stating dates, weekly hours and detailed duties, and letters that omit hours are routinely returned. Nurses, teachers and allied health staff moving between public employers use statements of service to have prior years recognised for salary progression.

Two edge cases deserve attention. AFS and credit licensees recruiting financial advisers and mortgage brokers must run reference checks under the protocol introduced after the Hayne Royal Commission, so the former employer's written statement carries more weight than usual. In a negotiated exit, an agreed reference is often annexed to the settlement deed, and once signed its wording binds the employer.

• The employer identification block sets out the legal name, ABN and business address, on letterhead and dated. Assessors reject letters they cannot trace to a verifiable entity.
• The period of employment gives exact start and finish dates rather than months or years. Where the employee held several positions, each one appears with its own date range, which is what long service leave continuity and salary recognition depend on.
• The basis of employment and hours clause specifies full time, part time, casual or fixed term, with average ordinary hours per week. For casual staff it records the actual average across the period, never a contracted figure that did not exist.
• The position and duties summary describes the work performed in neutral, verifiable terms. It follows the position description and any modern award classification, so the wording can be matched against your records.
• The optional reason for leaving line appears only at the employee's written request. Left blank by default, it keeps the statement factual and avoids reopening anything settled under a deed of release and settlement.
• The reference section sits on a separate page, signed by the supervising manager, with an honesty and reliance disclaimer. It confines comments to matters the referee observed directly.
• The consent clause records the employee's authority for you to answer verbal reference checks, provided anything said stays consistent with the written letter.

The statement of service matters most at state level because long service leave is still governed by state and territory legislation, preserved under s 113 of the Fair Work Act. Continuity of service often turns on the dates in your letter, and South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory each have their own Long Service Leave Act with different thresholds.

New South Wales applies the Long Service Leave Act 1955 (NSW): two months after ten years, and a pro rata payment after five years where the employer ends the employment other than for serious and wilful misconduct, or the employee resigns because of illness, incapacity or domestic or other pressing necessity. That trigger is why NSW employees sometimes ask for the reason for leaving to be stated. Construction workers accrue under the portable scheme in the Building and Construction Industry Long Service Payments Act 1986 (NSW).

Victoria has the most generous regime. Under the Long Service Leave Act 2018 (Vic), leave is available after seven years, continuity survives a resignation or dismissal followed by re-employment within 12 weeks, and s 11 carries service across a transfer of business or assets. Employers cannot refuse a request for long service leave records. Community services, contract cleaning and security workers sit under the Long Service Benefits Portability Act 2018 (Vic).

Queensland sets the entitlement in s 95 of the Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) at 8.6667 weeks after ten years, with pro rata access after seven years in defined circumstances. State and local government employees remain in the Queensland system under their own certified agreements, and QLeave administers portable schemes for building and construction, contract cleaning and community services.

Western Australia needs separate treatment. Sole traders, partnerships and unincorporated trusts sit outside the national system and fall under the Industrial Relations Act 1979 (WA) and the Minimum Conditions of Employment Act 1993 (WA). Amendments to the Long Service Leave Act 1958 (WA) that commenced on 20 June 2022 confirmed coverage of casual and seasonal employees and expanded record-keeping duties, with 8.667 weeks due after ten years and pro rata after seven. A resignation followed by later re-employment does not preserve continuity in WA, so precise dates matter.

You start with the employer's legal name and ABN, the address that will appear on the letterhead, and the employee's full name as it appears in payroll. From there, the form asks for each position held with its own dates and employment basis. Select casual and it prompts for average weekly hours across the period instead of a contracted figure. The duties field works best when you paste the main responsibilities from the position description and remove anything the employee did not actually do. The reason for leaving stays blank unless you confirm the employee asked for it in writing. The reference section is optional: switch it on and the form asks who supervised the employee, for how long, and steers you towards observed conduct rather than general impressions. You then nominate the signatory, ideally the direct manager. A copy of the finished statement of service should go straight into the employee file.

The error we see most often is kindness. A manager who liked the employee rounds the start date back a few months, upgrades "coordinator" to "manager" or lists duties the person only observed. Each change is discoverable with one call to payroll and exposes the business to a negligent misstatement claim. The second mistake is merging the statement of service and the reference into one letter, so a dispute about a sentence of praise discredits the dates as well. A third is writing from memory instead of from the employee records you are already required to keep.

The remaining traps appear after signing. Never let a verbal reference contradict the written one; a manager who says on the phone what the letter carefully avoided throws away the protection the drafting provided. Stating that someone was dismissed for theft without findings you can prove is a defamation risk that a neutral statement avoids entirely. Employers who sign an agreed reference in a settlement deed sometimes forget it and issue a different version years later, which can breach the deed. Keep the signed version on file and send that exact text every time it is requested.