“People behind people technology”
People Technology consultants, Phase 3, partner with businesses to help them to select, implement and manage their HR systems. Their goal is to promote great HR technology and provide expert opinion to guide their customers toward the right technology investment for their business. Consultants at Phase 3 will spend time familiarizing themselves about their customer’s HR processes and apply their specialist knowledge to provide recommendations that both they and their client can be confident in.
Phase 3 are partnering with Youmanage HR in a webinar, which showcases the best-practice Absence Management processes that reside within the Youmanage system.
Youmanage Absence Management
The Youmanage absence management framework is designed to follow HR-led best practice, abide with employment law regulations and make employee communication and interaction, processing data and managing of all types of absence simpler for users – from HR to Self Service employees.
Communication
It is key to communicate with people managers and employees as to what the business absence policies are, and to publish support and guidance to them.
Youmanage is used to store Company policies and procedures, as well as any other documents employees may benefit from having been made available to them The Documents section allows clients to create their own desired folder structure which can then be restricted to specific employee groups so only they can view them. When uploading a document, HR or the line manager can choose whether they wish the employees to simply read it or read and confirm that they understand the information.
Once the document has been published, you can keep track of who has, or has not read the document and this audit capability is available via the individual document and against each employee’s record. Where necessary, a reminder prompt can be sent to those who have not yet read the document to prompt them to do so.
Entitlement Calculations
There is no longer a need for businesses to use calculators or Excel sheets because Youmanage will automatically calculate employee’s holiday entitlement based on client configurable Working Patterns and Entitlement Profiles.
It’s important that holiday entitlement is calculated correctly and fairly – taking this into consideration, Youmanage will ensure that part-time employees and those who start or leave part way through a year will have their entitlement values pro-rated based on the full time equivalent.
Not only does Youmanage automatically pro-rate base entitlement, we can pro-rate bank holiday entitlement also.
For those zero-hour workers who submit a timesheet, their entitlement is automatically accrued based on the hours that have been authorised, which is then made available to them as a self-service user to book leave against.
Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) and Overtime can also be booked by a self-service employee, or input by an authorized HR or Manager User.
Sickness
When recording a period of sickness for an employee, it is essential that line managers follow best practice to ensure that the right things are being done at the right time and that all employees are treated fairly and in a consistent manner.
Therefore, when recording sickness within Youmanage, we don’t simply record the dates and reason for an individual absence, we want to make sure that the managers know when to ask for a fit note, and provide valuable guidance content to help them to deal with short or long-term absence issues.
When the employee returns to work, we also need to ensure they know to complete a self-certificate and once done, have a return-to-work meeting with their line manager or HR. Return to work meetings are useful to help identify short-term absence issues and let managers/HR know of any underlying issues which may contribute to the absence for the employee.
Triggers
To help manage sickness, multiple absence triggers can be set up where an automatic email is sent if an employee exceeds any trigger.
Triggers can be based on Sickness Days or Episodes, and importantly for some on Bradford Factor, for clients wishing to apply a relative weighting to unplanned absence.
Triggers being exceeded might highlight the need for a chat with the employee to find out if there is an underlying reason for the frequent absences. These conversations can then be stored as a file note against the employee record and automatically pulled through and used within a Performance Review, if required.
Case Management
If managers have had several conversations with an employee about their absence, they may feel the requirement for a more formal disciplinary action be undertaken. The Youmanage application will take users through the process and ensure they are following best practice and being properly guided by current employment regulations.
When starting a disciplinary action, users can pull through the notes that had been recorded against the employee’s record, as evidence to back up the reason for the disciplinary action. The Disciplinary module is unique in its approach as it affords clients full case management capability and will keep track of who does what and when and a full audit trail of cases, if required
End of Year Processing
End of year processing can be a headache for some but finishing one year and starting the next need not take days to complete and should be a simple straight forward process.
Within Youmanage, admin users can set up automatic notifications to inform employees of how many entitlement days they have remaining at defined periods throughout the year, to ensure they are used before the year end, or to remind them of the company’s carry-over rules. Standard reports can also be run for each manager to encourage their team to book holidays well in advance to prevent a stream of holiday requests nearing the year end.
Entitlement rules can also be defined to say whether unused entitlement is to be automatically carried over to the next entitlement year and if this will be capped to a maximum number of days and whether the allowable carry over expires. The carry over rules can also be pro-rated if required so that no manual calculations are required.
To find out more, register for our Absence Management and Best Practice webinar in partnership with Phase 3.
