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 that day, you can add leave in the Approve Shifts menu to ensure 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.
Please note: If an employee has “Allow negative leave balance” enabled on an entitlement, they can take leave even when their balance is insufficient. The system calculates the available balance by adding the current balance to the allowed capped negative amount. If no cap is set on the negative balance, the system displays the infinity symbol.
- 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 appear if 'Allow file upload' is enabled for 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 setup.
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.
Luke, a full-time employee, has called in sick for his 6:30 am to 4:15 pm shift. He has also emailed his manager a copy of his medical certificate.
What does Luke's manager need to action shift in Approve Shifts?
- Add Personal Leave to Luke's shift.
- Upload the medical certificate for Luke's shift.
- Turn off Include shift hours (as Luke 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; select it to view 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.
Please note: If an employee has 'Allow negative leave balance' enabled on their Employee Profile, leave can be applied even when the balance is insufficient. The system will calculate the available balance by combining the existing balance with the allowable negative amount.
- 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 appear if 'Allow file upload' is enabled for 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.
Luke, a full-time employee, was sent home sick after 2 hours into his 7:30 am to 2 pm shift.
What does Luke's manager need to action shift in Approve Shifts?
- Add Personal Leave to Luke's shift.
- Check Luke's worked hours.
- Leave the Include shift hours toggle on, but adjust the hours to what Luke actually worked.
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; select it to view 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 require employees to submit their 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 solely on the time worked.
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, you will see a yellow warning indicating 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 sick and submits a leave application in Time Off.
Luke, a full-time employee, called in sick for his 7 am to 4:15 pm shift.
Luke has also submitted a leave application for his shift.
What does Luke's manager need to do to action his shift and leave?
- Check Luke's worked hours, then select 'view' against the leave application to go to the Time off page.
- Approve Luke's pending leave request and choose the 'Keep all rostered shifts' option. This will allow you to adjust the worked hours within the Approve shift page.
- Update the worked hours and approve the shift.
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.