Easily manage when your employees use leave to cover absences from rostered shifts from your Approve Shifts page
To help your duty managers streamline the shift approval process, leave can be applied directly to a shift from Approve Shifts.
The process for handling leave in Approve Shifts will depend on the scenario; the most common use cases are:
- An employee calls in sick - uses a full day of leave.
- An employee is sent home sick - uses a partial day of work & a partial day of leave.
- Alternatively, employees may submit a leave application to redeem their personal leave in their Employee App; as such, there will be no need to add it in Approve Shifts.
Please note: As Salaried employees' shifts do not appear in Approve Shifts, their leave requests are managed from Time Off. The employee can submit a Leave Application via their App, or an Admin can submit it on their behalf.
Before adding leave in Approve Shifts, please review your main menu > Platform Settings > Time & Attendance settings and ensure the 'Allow 'No Hours Worked' in approve shifts and submit times pages' is enabled.
This article will cover how to manage leave when:
- An employee calls in sick
- An employee is sent home sick
- An employee has already submitted a personal leave application
In all cases, supporting documentation, such as a medical certificate, can be uploaded for the leave application. You can read more about configuring your leave entitlements here.
When an employee calls in sick and is unable to work any hours for the day, you have the option to add leave to the Approve Shifts menu to ensure that the shift is adequately covered and paid.
By adding leave in this situation, you can quickly manage your shift approvals and leave from one single place.
How to add leave for a full day in Approve Shifts:
- From the quick menu, navigate to Time & attendance > Approve Shifts. Select the Edit icon for the required shift.
- Select Add leave, and from the menu to the left, select the following:
- Leave type - The type of leave being redeemed.
- Leave amount - The available leave amount is shown below this box.
- Reason - Select the appropriate option. These can be customised for your platform.
- Comments - Include any additional information regarding the employee's absence.
- Optionally, upload a supporting document.
Hot tip: This option will only display if you have the 'Allow file upload' option enabled on the Leave entitlement. - If required, add any additional leave types.
-
Turn off the 'Include shift hours toggle.
- This removes any normal shift hours (Ordinary / Overtime hours) from being approved.
- When this toggle is not turned off, the system will include both leave and shift hours for this shift which may trigger overtime, depending on your award set up.
Please note: For the 'Include shift hours' toggle to be available, you will first need to enable the 'Allow 'No Hours Worked' in approve shifts and submit times pages' setting from the main menu > Platform Settings > Time & Attendance.
- Select Save and approve Xx hours.
SCENARIO
We'll use the following example to look at how to add leave to a shift when an employee calls in sick.
Amy, a full-time employee, has called in sick for her shift from 10 am to 6 pm. She has also emailed her manager a copy of her medical certificate.
What does Amy's manager need to do to action her shift in Approve Shifts?
- Add Personal Leave to Amy's shift.
- Upload the medical certificate for Amy's shift.
- Turn off Include shift hours (as Amy didn't actually work any hours)
Watch below to see this process in action.
Once a shift has been approved using this method, the Approve column will show:
- The normal shift hours should be crossed out.
- Added leave hours will appear as a purple badge.
- The leave icon will be highlighted; you can select this icon to see a summary of the approved leave details.
When an employee works a part of their shift and then goes home sick, you can add leave from Approve Shifts to cover the remainder of their shift.
Once again, by adding leave from Approve Shifts, you can quickly approve both working hours and leave for your shift from one place.
Please note: For positions with shift minimums set up in the pay rules. If the combination of your employee's approved hours and leave does not meet the minimum set, this rule will apply and add the missing hours to your employee's payslip.
How to add leave for a partial day in Approve Shifts:
- From the quick menu, navigate to Time & attendance > Approve Shifts. Select the Edit icon for the required shift.
- Select Add leave, and from the menu to the left, select the following:
- Leave type - The type of leave being redeemed.
- Leave amount - The available amount is shown below this box.
- Reason - Select the appropriate option. These can be customised for your platform.
- Comments - Include any additional information regarding the employee's absence.
- Optionally, upload a supporting document.
Hot tip: This option will only display if you have the 'Allow file upload' option enabled on the Leave entitlement. - If required, add any additional leave types.
- Check the normal shift hours and ensure the 'Include shift hours' toggle is on.
- When this toggle is left on, the system will include both leave and shift hours for this shift.
- Shift hours may be adjusted due to your platform's clock settings.
Please note: For the 'Include shift hours' toggle to be available, you will first need to enable the 'Allow 'No Hours Worked' in approve shifts and submit times pages' setting from the main menu > Platform Settings > Time & Attendance. However, for this use case, it is not required.
- Select Save and approve Xx hours.
SCENARIO
We'll use the following example to look at how to approve a shift when an employee is sent home sick.
Amy, a full-time employee, was sent home sick after 2 hours into her shift from 10 am to 6 pm.
What does Amy's manager need to do to action her shift in Approve Shifts?
- Add Personal Leave to Amy's shift.
- Check Amy's worked hours.
- Leave the Include shift hours toggle on.
Watch below to see this process in action.
Once a shift has been approved using this method, the Approve column will show:
- The normal shift hours should not be crossed out.
- Added leave will appear as a purple badge.
- The leave icon will be highlighted; you can select this icon to see a summary of the approved leave details.
There may be instances where an employee applies for leave on a day that they have a rostered shift. You will find this to be the case if you request that employees submit their own personal leave through the Employee App.
When leave applications are submitted through the app and managed in the Time Off menu, you manage the shift based on the time worked alone.
How to manage a shift when leave is added through Time Off:
- From the quick menu, navigate to Time & attendance > Approve Shifts.
- Action the shift accordingly:
- Decline the shift & provide a reason - For no hours worked (Employee called in sick).
- Approve the hours worked - For partial hours worked (Employee is sent home sick).
- When reviewing this shift, it will show a yellow warning informing you of the employee's leave application. Select View to be taken directly to the filtered leave application to action it. You can also navigate to it via Time Off.
- Approve the pending leave request.
SCENARIO
We'll use the following example to look at how to approve a shift when an employee is sent home sick and submits a leave application in Time Off.
Amy, a full-time employee, was sent home sick after 2 hours into her shift from 10 am to 6 pm.
Amy has also submitted a leave application from Time Off for the remaining hours of her shift.
What does Amy's manager need to do to action her shift and leave?
- Check Amy's worked hours and leave the Include shift hours toggle on.
- Approve Amy's shift in Approve Shifts.
- Approve Amy's pending leave request.
Watch below to see this process in action.
Once a shift has been approved using this method, the Approve column will show:
- The normal shift hours should not be crossed out.
- The leave badge will not appear, but the leave will appear as a warning.
- The leave icon will not be highlighted.