Surely everybody has had enough of COVID-19 by now, hence we are only briefly going to touch on variations now.
When the lock down started, we recommended every employer to get all their employees to sign variation agreements, agreeing to the reduced wages and hours, for the duration of the pandemic. Now that we are in Level 1 and this is likely to be something similar to the 'new normal', all businesses are allowed to trade again and we recommend you revisit the previous signed variations and review or amend them as required, particularly if you indicated they were for the duration of the pandemic.
If your business is back to normal, you can merely state that the clauses varied in the signed variation will be restored as before. If your business is not quite back up and running as it should be, you can renegotiate the variation, agreeing on less hours, reduced rates or wages etc.
You don't need to commit to an end date to a variation, but it could be a point for negotiation as you might not be sure when the status quo will be restored.
For a free Variation Agreement template please see the following link: www.employers.co.nz/downloads.aspx?pid=ltrvar