Automate your absence policy

Many HR teams spend a lot of time putting together a comprehensive absence policy. Sadly, their efforts are watered-down if managers don’t know or understand the policy, or if they forget to check what absences meet the trigger criteria. However, some absence triggers are so complex that you definitely need a computer to check who trips them. Working with spreadsheets is the worst enemy of a sophisticated absence management process. Never fear, Engage is here to help and automate your absence policy.

Account owner has access to amend settings

Honeydew’s support team are on hand to help HR or senior management teams configure the policy into Engage settings. Once the initial setup is done, however, the nominated account owners can amend the settings anytime. The company preferences page forms part of the Administration area in Engage. We recently updated the layout of the page to make it easier to use. Now, the sections are separated into a sidebar menu so you can easily pick the area you’re looking for:

General

The general settings are usually defined at the outset and stay in place permanently. Decisions to make include: What absence cause dictionary does the company want to use? What is the default work pattern for new or existing staff? Do you want to automatically delete leavers records after a period?

Personalise

It is really easy to whitelabel Engage with your company colours and logo. Simply enter the colours you’d like to use in a hexadecimal code and upload a logo file. If hexadecimal colour codes are new to you, check out https://www.colorhexa.com/ for some clues.

Definitions

What is your long-term absence definition? What absence level are you aiming for? How much does an absence day cost at your organisation? Set these values here to customise your reports.

Holidays

If you’re using Engage for holidays, you can configure a default holiday year and allowance. In case some employees have different holiday terms, you can also create secondary sets for specific cohorts. Avoid double-bookings by enabling team-view so employees can see pre-booked leave in their team.

Optional features

The optional features are a group of special customisations that may or may not be useful for your managers. Some of these will add questions to the Return to Work interview form or enable additional reporting options, like absence statistics by job title. You can also set groups of employment terms to customise trigger settings in more detail.

Data API

Yes, we have an API! Yes, it is free to use for all subscribers. Contact us to find out more about automated data feeds between Engage!

Company policy

All users have access to the Resource hub area of Engage. If you enter details about your company absence policy here, your users will be able to read the notes in the Resource hub.

Sick pay policy

If you use the Sick pay authorisation tool in Engage, you may want to remind managers of your company sick pay policy. Following a decision about sick pay, the notes will appear on the task forms.

Messages for absence registration

You can customise the absence registration forms to capture additional information. All the forms are intended to be filled in real-time while the absent employee is on the phone. Therefore we recommend phrasing the messages in the second person, as direct questions. As a result, the answers captured will be stored in the log on the absence record. To keep the messages as relevant as possible to each absentee, specific questions can be asked for certain types of absence.

Trigger settings for manager notifications and task

Finally, this last section is where the real magic happens. You can code in your trigger points, and make sure no absence update goes unnoticed. The settings can cover all types of absence events, from new and updated records to returns to work, 3 spells in 12 months, 10 days over a rolling period, stress-related absences, no updates received in 2 weeks, expected length exceeds your long term definition etc.