During the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important that you know how Youmanage can help you overcome the challenges presented by the crisis.
We understand that your business continuity plans are currently being tested to their limits and, at the same time, you’re having to proactively manage policies on remote working, sickness, and absenteeism.
As your HR software supplier, we want to make sure that you’re making the most of Youmanage as you deal with the disruption affecting your business. That’s why we’ve created this guide, which provides some helpful tips and suggestions on how you can use Youmanage to deliver effective communication and to be precise with absence data processing.
Whether you’re having to communicate company news and policy changes or dealing with requests to work from home, or if you need an effective means to record and report on employees who are on holiday, are sick, are self-isolating, or are on unpaid leave, then we are eager to help you overcome these challenges.
Communication
As with any situation, communication with employees and managers is key and creates clarity.
Therefore, to ensure your employees know what your organisation’s plans are, we would suggest uploading the relevant documents to your Youmanage system and ask your employees to read them.
The Company News section is a great way to keep your employees updated, as and when there are changes to your organisation. You can also use the Resources area to post links to reputable news sources which can provide information to your employees on how to keep themselves safe.
Remote Working
Your organisation may currently have many employees working from home, either to distance themselves from colleagues or as a result of self-isolation, or it may be your organisation that is choosing to ask employees to work remotely.
Your company may have specific requirements to deal with this situation. Youmanage is able to accommodate all scenarios, as there are various absence types that can be recorded for employees. These include:
Non-Office Day If the employee is working during self-isolation, then we recommend using the ‘Non-Office Day’ absence type, as this recognises the employee is working and does not contribute to any absence triggers.
Other If the employee is self-isolating and unable to work during this time, you may wish to record this as an ‘Other’ absence, and you can then choose whether it is paid or unpaid.
Sickness If the employee is off due to contracting the virus you may want to record the specific reason to get a complete picture of how this has affected your business.
In addition, we encourage accurate configuration as this allows precise data recording which will prove useful for subsequent management reporting.
Holiday Cancellations
You may find that during the current pandemic, your employees may wish to cancel their impending holidays and save them for a later date, however, this may not be suitable for your organisation.
Youmanage gives you the ability to review holiday cancellation requests from Self-Service users where you can either approve or decline them, and you can also set this up to only apply to specific groups of employees depending on their place in your organisation’s hierarchy structure.
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
The UK Government has published guidance on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, where they have agreed to pay up to 80% of wages for employees who would otherwise be made redundant, capped at £2,500 per staff member per month. This allows businesses to retain staff and avoid people being laid-off.
In order to for employers to claim this, they must designate workers as ‘furloughed’.
‘Furlough’ is not a term which currently has a legal meaning within employment law. However, it is now being used to describe staff who remain under contract and on payroll but are unable to work because the employer does not have work for them to do as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Youmanage gives you various tools to deal with Furloughed Employees. If you wish to highlight furloughed employees, you may wish to create a new employee status and assign it to the relevant employees. As furloughed workers are to receive 80% of their wages, you may also wish to update their salary against their record, with the relevant associated reason. Once added, you can also update the affected employee’s salary record.
Security
As much of your workforce is likely to be accessing your HR system remotely at this time, it’s critical to assess your system’s security arrangements and to consider making some wholesale changes to how employees access Youmanage.
We all have an obligation to ensure that data remains safe when our employees are logging in from home, which could be considered a less-secure environment than the normal workplace.
Luckily, Youmanage has a multitude of security features to ensure the safety of your sensitive data, such as Two-Factor Authentication, User Roles and Permission Sets, IP Whitelisting, and many others, which you can read about here.
The current COVID-19 crisis is escalating in the UK and around the world. During this concerning and unprecedented time, the Youmanage team is here to answer any and all queries you may have about how your HR system can help you to overcome obstacles presented by Coronavirus.
You can get in touch with us via our website, email, or you can call us on 01259 233998.
