Shiftbase has a wide variety of options when it comes to setting up and managing absences. In this article, we will give you a bird's-eye view of how absences work, what settings are relevant, how you can differentiate between contract types. We will reference to multiple other knowledge sources for more details on each subject.
The goal is to set up the right system so your managers and planners can start adding, editing and removing absences as they come in.
Contents
Settings & required permissions
Absence policies & contract types
Absence balances & accrual factor
Overview
To paint the broad picture of how absences work in Shiftbase, we will cover each part and go into detail on their corresponding chapter in this article.
- We will start with the Contract types. At the contract type, you assign an Absence Policy. The absence policy serves as an overarching set of rules for this specific contract type. This enables you to create variations of absences rules across different contract types.
- The Absence Policy serves as a set of rules. Here, you dictate on what basis absence balances are accrued, how wait hours are deducted, whether employees are absent on public holidays and finally, which absence types can be used and which types should be excluded.
- Once the policy is set up and properly assigned to the contract type, we can now look at how the specific employee contract is influenced by the policy.
Settings & required permissions
Depending on the permission groups, there are certain actions that allow managers to approve absences and restrict employees from editing.
You can consider which role should make adjustments when it comes to
- Editing absences
- Approving absences
- View absence balances
You can enable or disable these permissions for each permission group by going to Settings > Security, and expanding the Absence section. Review what each permission group can do and adjust it if you would like it to be different.
You can read how to assign a specific permission group to an employee here.
💡 Note: When thinking about permission groups, consider roles such as an administrator, manager, branch manager, planner, or employee.
Absence policies & contract types
The Absence Policy is connected to a contract type. This allows you to create different policies for different types of employments. By default, Shiftbase has two absence policies for fixed and flex employees. The main difference being the time-off balance accrual based on contract hours or the actual worked hours.
Furthermore, you can enable and disable certain absence types depending on whether they are relevant for your organisation. If an absence type is relevant, you can also decide if absence type has a balance. Read more about each specific setting in Managing Absence Policies.
💡 Note: By “balance,” we mean whether there is a pool of hours available. This applies, for example, to parental leave or vacation, where an employee is allowed to use a certain number of hours.
Absence balances & accrual factor
As described above, you can attach one or multiple balance to an absence type in the Absence Policy settings. In Shiftbase there is one time-off balance by default. This time-off balance is attached to the absence type Vacation. Let's look into the accrual of a balance.
With a balance, you can set up an accrual factor. The accrual factor itself dictates how many holiday hours are accrued over one worked hour. The accrual factor is based on the number of holidays in one year an employee with a full-time contract is entitled to. Employees with less contract hours, will automatically accrue holiday hours pro rata.
You can also configure balances to not accrue hours. This is useful, if you wish to manually add hours to this balance. For this, you can set the accrual factor to 0. An example of a balance without accrual, is to use this balance to convert plus hours into holiday hours.
Lastly, you can decide if balances expire after the year they are accrued in.
Absence types
On policy level, you can decide which absences are relevant for which contract type. If you need an additional absence type, you can create a new type and enable it on the policy.
When creating a new absence type, you can customise its workings like whether they are paid or unpaid leaves, allow open-ended absences and what should happen with existing shifts when this absence is approved. Read about all options in Managing Absence Types.
Employee contract
Now that you are all set up, we can have a look how an Absence Policy and their attached types and balances express on the individual employee and their contract.
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In the Absence overview of the employee, you will find all relevant balances. The balance details the number of hours which are taken from the previous year, how many hours are accrued to date and how many are forecasted in the selected year.
- The accrual starts from the Start date of the employee contract. From this moment onward, the balance will accrue either by contract hours or worked hours, according to the time-off balance accrual setting in the Absence Policy.
- When adding an absence, the types that can be added are dependent on whether they are enabled in the Absence Policy.
