Manage Absences With flair

Introduction to Absence Management

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Managing employee absences can help businesses ensure continuity and minimize disruptions in the workplace. It’s important to have coherent policies, procedures, and systems in place to handle holiday requests or unscheduled staff leave.

The flair HR app and the Employee Hub help companies create an organized absence system that respects employees' rights while keeping operations flowing smoothly.

Depending on regional regulations, organizations need a framework customized for their specific country – with flair you have access to the tools needed to stay compliant at all times.

How To Set Up Absence Processes

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From your flair HR Homepage on Salesforce, click on the HR Admin page. From there, go to Attendance > Absence Categories and Policies.

Here you will notice a simple three-panel screen, which displays your absence options in a Kanban board view. Let’s walk through the options available to you.

• Absence Categories: Build an absence management strategy and manage employee leave according to the situation. Create and view the reasons for which your employees can officially be absent. The reasons are customizable and can include instances like Sickness, Family Leave, Vacation Days, or Overtime.

• Accrual Policies: An accrual policy sets out how absence entitlements are calculated. This section allows you to manage the number of days that employees have available for a specific category of absence. For example, a company might have a policy of providing employees with 28 days of vacation per year. You can manage this policy here.

• Adding Minimum Time Notice

  Absences like vacations or study leave should be planned in advance. Adding a minimum time notice for certain absences helps you to avoid short notice requests. You can make those changes directly on the flair HR app.

  To give you an example, let’s set a minimum request notice for employee vacations. To do this go to the Absence Settings in the flair HR app. In your Absence Categories go to Vacation Days and navigate to the Accrual Policies section. Use the down arrow to select Absence Request Policies and then click Create.

  Now you have the option to add restrictions. Of the given options, tick the box labeled Minimum Amount of Notice Required. Next choose the number of Days, Hours, or Months, an absence request needs in order to be accepted.

• Accrual Policies for More Days Off

  Your accrual policies determine how many days people are allowed to take off within a certain period of time. flair also allows you to set up a process for employees to request more days off.

  By ticking Require Document Upload employees will be asked to upload a document along with their Absence Request. This document could be a medical letter or any other time of information.

• Employees: Under the third Employees panel, you can assign staff to specific accrual policies. For example, you can choose if an employee is eligible to request Overtime absence.

Creating Absence Categories

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In your flair HR app on Salesforce, visit the HR Admin page. Click on the Absence Categories and Policies subheading to start creating categories of absences.

This section of the flair HR app on Salesforce shows a screen displaying three panels: Absence Categories, Accrual Policies, and Employees.

Select Create on the Absence Categories panel to devise an absence type. It will reveal several important fields.

• Icon: Choose an icon that staff will associate with this absence. This icon will display on the Employee Hub. For example, a leaf icon could signify vacation days.
• Name: Write the naming convention for your absence e.g. Vacation or Illness.
• Type: Display how you count absences, either in days or hours
• Group: Add the absence category to a group, if you have already created one
• Requires Approval: If you check this box, absence requests in this category will be sent to the employee’s manager for approval
• Public: If left unchecked, this absence category will be hidden for other employees in the Employee Hub. If an employee requests an absence in this category, the reason for the absence will be hidden from their colleagues.
• Paid: If left unchecked, the duration of the absence will be subtracted from the employee’s weekly timesheet hours
• Unlimited: If left unchecked, this absence category will be limited. You can set the limits in the accrual policy. Unlimited absence categories, like sick leave, do not require accrual policies.
• Compensatory Time: Check this box for absence categories that are used to compensate employees for working overtime
• Export in Payroll: Check this box if the absence category should be exported in the payroll documents. Sick leave and vacation should be exported to payroll, while a work-from-home policy would normally be left out.
• Restrict Absence Deletion: If this box is checked, employees will not be able to delete their absences
• Special Rules: You can type any additional information in this field and it will appear in the Add New Absence section of the Employee Hub

Once you’re happy with your new absence category, click Save to finish.

Creating Accrual Policies

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An accrual policy determines how employees earn or build up days of leave. Typically workers earn holiday leave by working a certain amount of days a year.

This type of accrued leave policy can be implemented through the Accrual Policies Panel on the flair HR app through Salesforce.

If you create a limited absence category, you’ll need to define and create accrual policies. Vacation days are a good example of a limited absence category type of leave.

Let’s take a look at how to create a New Accrual Policy on the flair HR app:

Click the Create button on the Accrual Policies Panel and it will display several fields for you to define your policy:

• Accrual Policy Name: Put a title on your policy. Is it a policy for vacations, sick leave, etc?
• Absence Category: Select the category you want the policy applied to
• Amount: Set a limit on the number of days per absence. E.g. 28 days for annual leave.
• Interval: Choose the time over which the amount of absences is accrued
• Proration: Define the formula for how absences or leave days are calculated and assigned
• Expiration: Designate if accrued absence days can be carried over to another year

Absence Request Policies

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Not every business will have the same absence request policies. That’s why flair makes it easy to customize your settings for absences.

To do this, select Absence Settings in the flair HR app on Salesforce and visit the kanban style board. Clicking on the downward arrow beside the Accrual Policies heading will reveal a new setting field – Absence Request Policies.

Here you will be able to set the mandatory requirements surrounding certain absence requests.

For example, make it a requirement for employees to upload a doctor’s note after a specific period of sickness. Or set the minimum notice period for a vacation request. Once you have made your policy changes, they will appear in the Employee Hub.

Assign Policies to Employees

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On the third and final panel of the Absence Categories and Policies page, you can assign employees to accrual policies that have been created. Click on Assign to fill in:

• Start date
• End date
• Select employee name

Click Assign To in order to complete the process.

Mass-Assigning Absence Policies

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You can also mass-assign absence categories and accrual policies to save time. The process is similar to assigning an individual employee to an accrual policy.

From the Absence Settings page in flair HR, choose the absence category and accrual policy you want to assign, then click Assign above the right-hand column.

Choose a start date and, if necessary, an end date. Then click Select Employees. Here you can select all employees or choose them individually.

For more options, click Show Filters. Now you can filter the employees by location, department, position, and more. For instance, in this example, we’ve chosen to assign our 28-day vacation policy to all active employees at every German location. To do this, we clicked on select Location > Equals and then selected all German locations from the dropdown menu.

Click the checkbox in the top-left corner to select all employees then click Add. You can now repeat the process with different filters or, if you’re finished, simply click on Assign To Employees. Now you've assigned that policy to multiple employees at once.

Viewing Absences on Salesforce

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flair provides a complete overview of workplace absences, including upcoming days off and requests for leave.

From the Employees page on the flair HR app on Salesforce, it is possible to view and enable absence categories on each staff member’s profile. For more in-depth information, you can simply click on an absence category within a staff member’s profile.

Commenting on Absences

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Open and clear dialogue is important in the workplace. The flair comments feature for Absences allows colleagues to communicate better. By adding a comment in the Absences section on the Employee Hub, you can clear up any queries or say thanks for a vacation approval.

To do this, click the Speech Bubble icon on an existing Absence request and begin the conversation. You can also attach a relevant document, like a doctor’s note. Send a link or add an emoji and an image. Then press Enter to send your message.

Absence Requests for Employees

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For convenience, employees have multiple options when it comes to requesting a leave of absence through flair. Let’s explore the options.

Employee Hub Absence Requests

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A tool for all staff, the cloud-based Employee Hub is an online management portal that helps staff members complete HR tasks. It is also available via the flair Android and iOS mobile apps, as well as the Mac app. Here’s how absence management works on the Employee Hub:

• Employee Hub: From the Employee Hub dashboard, you can make a simple request via the New Absence button

• Under the Absences header displayed on the sidebar to the left, you will find the buttons Overview and My Absences. Both allow you to create absences.

How To Request an Absence

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When adding a new absence, select an option from the absence categories your company has created. For example, your employer may have created designated categories for vacation or sickness leave.

• Next, choose the dates of your absence request under the field titled Period. You may also add a comment, and then simply click Create to complete the request.
• Depending on the chosen category and its accrual policy, your absence may need approval from a manager. If not, its status will change immediately to Approved under the Upcoming Absences heading.
• Once the approval status of an absence changes, you’ll be notified if it has been accepted or rejected via email. Under Settings in the Employee Hub, you can set your absence notification preferences.

Slack is an instant messaging program owned by Salesforce. Through its integration with flair, it provides users with a further option to communicate absences.

Without having to leave Slack, flair users can directly manage absences. As an employee you can request any type of absence, starting with vacations and sick leave.

These actions can be completed using the flair app within Slack.

Slack Absence Requests

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flair users can request time off or communicate sick leave to a manager using an optimized instant or direct message on the flair app in Slack. Any updates made on Slack can also be viewed on the Employee Hub. Here’s how it works:

• Slack: Under the Apps section on Slack, you’ll find the flair app, where you can request an absence with one click
• Request Absence: Click here and choose the Start and End Date of your absence. Select your type of leave, and write a comment for a manager if you wish. Then click Submit.

Absence Request Approval

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flair provides employers with a straightforward way to manage staff absences and requests for leave. Below we explain how to approve requests from employees.

Approve Absence Requests as a Manager

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When an employee requests an absence, you will receive a notification with details about the request via email. The following steps can be taken to efficiently manage an absence request:

• The My Team section in the Employee Hub is where managers can view all absence requests. As a manager, you can review requests here or also open the Absence Requests tab on the sidebar.
• By clicking on an employee’s pending absence request, you can view further details. It is also possible to leave a comment. For example, you may want to explain why a request is being denied or ask an employee to consider different dates for their absence.
• Once you have made a decision, simply click on Accept or Reject to complete the approval process. The employee will then be notified.

• Absence requests may also be approved under the Messages tab of the flair app on Slack.

How To Check the Approver of an Absence Request

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If you want to check who is responsible for approving an absence request, follow these simple steps.

First of all, open the Absences page in the flair HR app and select the absence you’re looking for. Now click the Related tab.

Under Absence Approval Requests, you will see the name of the approver and the status of approval. If you click on the Absence Approval Name, you will see further details. For example, the Last Modified section shows you when the status of the approval was last changed and who made the change.