Release Note: Open-ended Absences V2   P ...

Hi {@005D0000003qJEiIAM}​, 

Thanks for your thoughts – It definitely impacts inputting absences. The idea behind this release is to improve efficiency and accuracy. This change in the process of recording absence days means that periods of incapacity are more accurate, reducing the risk of more days being deducted than is required.

Also, creating an open-ended absence meant that the employee in question could not be scheduled in the future, which blocked managers from planning if the employee’s absence was expected to be short term. This change will prevent this issue.

If the end date is unknown, I would recommend the following as best practice:

1.     Up to 7 days – 1 week should be entered and a new absence created for the subsequent period, the date can then be amended if they return in the current week. Or create absences as individual days.

2.     After the first 7 days, the employee should have a doctor’s note and this is the date that should be entered.

Likewise, for any periods of Authorised absence, I would expect the employee to have supplied the expected return date. This can also be amended if they return earlier than expected.

Thanks for highlighting the changes to the process – I hope this helps to answer your query!

Best,

Silvio

Fourth

That's not the solution though, as we will end up with absence that are processed on the payroll and then deleted (causing underpayments and breeches to the NMW)

On average, the payroll team query 25% off our absences a month which if these are all entered as a day and still need to be queried increases the work load for both us the customer and the payroll team

What about unauthorised absences when someone goes AWOL, we wont know the return date for this.

Being able to leave an absence open ended is better for us as a business and having such little notice on this being force upon us is not really a fair move

Whilst this seems like a good idea has anyone considered the impacts to both businesses and the Payroll Team

With a lot of absences we do not know the end date until the employee has returned to work, this will result in managers inputting absences for 1 day at a time where the end date is not known and increase the risk that days are not deducted correctly

It will also increase the amount of absence checks that the payroll team have to complete each month with a high risk off mistakes and missed deductions

Hi {@005D0000003qJEiIAM}​ and {@005D000000AKLKwIAP}​,

We have relayed your feedback to the Product Decision teams. Thank you for providing the specific examples/situations that will be affected as this will enable them to review this in more detail.

In the meantime, our recommended best practice for these situations would be as follows:

• Unauthorised absences when employee goes AWOL: Record the absence day-by-day to manage the employee’s unexpected return. Entering day by day will also prompt action to terminate the employee and stop their holiday accruing. Alternatively the payroll cut off date could be entered if you are concerned that the absence will not be entered. 
• Absent employees appearing available on the rota: It would be recommended to have the employee available on the rota for when they return to work as an employee cannot be excluded from future shifts just because they are absent in a particular period. If a further Doctors note is received the new absence can be entered with the dates specified on the Doctors note and this will link to the previous absence and the shifts will be overwritten.
• Absence records will looking disjointed for long term/persistent absences: Periods of absence will link and this will be displayed as Yes in the right hand column. If you wish to monitor periods of incapacity We would recommend using the Bradford Factor functionality. 

Adding the ‘End date’ for an absence is best practice for recording absences, if an employee works and the absence has not been ended, the business is at risk of paying below NMW as salaried employees will still have deductions made. The NMW export will not flag these employees if there is an open ended absence. I would recommend to arrange for some Solution Success time to discuss how this release would work best for your businesses. You can find out more about how to arrange this on the {@0F9D0000000HLaiKAG}​ group.

We do see the benefits of open-ended absences for the situations you have described above and we have raised your feedback and examples to the Product Decision team.

Thank you again for your feedback and we shall be in touch with the update once the Product Decision team meet.

Best,

Silvio

Fourth

The process around SSP and CSP definitely needs improving however I do think that with this change there will also be a danger that employees appear available on the rota if an expected end date is entered but the employees absence continues for a longer period. In addition the absence records will also look disjointed and be more confusing when managing long term or persistent absence.

Hi @Denise Aitken​,

Thanks for your post – All this feedback is invaluable and we have relayed it back to our Product Decision Team. I will add your feedback to this too, Denise. Thank you!

We will of course update you with the outcome from when the Product Decision Team meet next week. Thanks again for all your great feedback for this release.

Best,

Silvio

Fourth

This is a very bad move, I ​agree with both previous contributors.  This will lead to many single day absences, and will make reporting to identify employees with e.g. 5 absences in the last 12 months very difficult, as one absence of 5 days will be counted as 5 absence.  I would urge you not to implement this on 18 Jan as planned, and to make it an option rather than mandatory.

Just to confirm, is the system change just that an end date must be added? We extend the absence so you have one period which makes it easy to view trigger points.

I think this is a good move. Our internal policy requires the employee to contact their Line Manager each working day whilst self-certifying, therefore the absence end date is added, and extended daily. Once a Fit Note is received the future end date can be added, if no fit note received then the absence is recorded unauthorised. Obviously this is our specific policy but disabling the open ended absence is a positive step for us.

Just to confirm, is the system change just that an end date must be added? We extend the absence so you have one period which makes it easy to view trigger points.

Hi all,

Really great to have your feedback and see some knowledge sharing!

Thank you {@005D000000AEMaAIAX}​ for your feedback too. And yes, I confirm that you’re right. The release will mean that an end date must be added when recording absences. I posted our recommended approaches to recording absences above too if that helps, though your current approach is what we would recommend too!

We have also heard back from the Product Decision Team. They had a discussion around your feedback on this release and as this relates more around different businesses and their operational procedures, they are still going ahead with the release. They have concluded that not having end dates with absences causes far more issues with CSP and SSP calculations. Consequently, the decision has been made for it not to be optional.

I understand that a number of you have concerns about this release and how it will affect your internal processes. There has also been a discussion thread raised about this, in which I’ll share some of the best practices mentioned above, in case you’d like to join in the discussion. I would also suggest booking onto an #AskFourth session with our Solution Success team if you need support for your business.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can provide to help you with this change.

Best,

Silvio

Fourth

Whilst that seems like a good idea, we unfortunately don't allow managers to edit absences in the past due to errors occurring

Hopefully @Silvio Pelizza​ has an update on the PDT decision  ​

Hi Denise, no we have one absence and extend the dates i.e. if an employee is absent today we add an absence starting and ending the 16th, if they are then absent again tomorrow we open the same absence record and change the end date to the 17th. We keep doing this until they return or if we get a Fit Note we add the end date as per the note. This was we can easily track periods of absence within a time scale i.e. 26 weeks.

@Silvio Pelizza​ Thanks for the update, however this now puts our business at risk off overpayment and increases our payroll costs due to absences not logged

It creates extra work as absences will have to be entered daily, creates extra payroll checks due to the increased absence lines​

Based on this would urge you to reconsider not deploying the update

Oliver - doesn't this means you have lots of one day absences?  How do you then accurately report on e.g. employees with 5 absences in the last 12 months, as Fourth will show 1,2,3,4&5 Jan as the 5 absences, when in fact this is one absence from 1-5 Jan?​

Hi all,

We’ve had a further update on this release. The Product Decision Team have decided to retract this release temporarily. 

They have confirmed that this would be a great benefit to multiple users. However, as there are many users who have internal processes that would be complicated by this release, they have decided that this function should be something that’s configurable at a Global Settings Level. Therefore they will expand the functionality to be driven by a global setting and release it once they have done this. We will of course inform you once we know this will be ready.

Thank you all for your invaluable feedback on this release. Thank you @Silvio Pelizza​ for feeding this back to us through the correct channels so that this decision could be reviewed.

Best,

Product Team

Fourth