Working with absence schedules
Updated 2 months ago
by
Leigh Hutchens
What is an absence schedule?
Absence schedules are created as a means to manage future absences, to help organize and plan for absence shifts, and to ensure that the correct payouts and configurations are applied so that an employee is reimbursed correctly.
Benefits of creating absence schedules
Using absence schedules creates a series of "phantom shifts" whenever a future absence is required/requested well before the working schedule has been created and rolled out. This gives managers something to approve and plan around - as well as provides a “container/placeholder” for Quinyx to attribute different payout rules and configurations.
These absence schedules can then work as a weekly template, which can be selected in the absence dialogue to create salary-based replacement shifts/containers.
Example of an absence schedule
Parental leave is a good example of where to use an absence schedule. Take, for instance, an employee that should get paid parental leave from May to September next year. The company doesn’t schedule shifts that far in advance and hasn’t rolled out the schedule yet for next year, so instead, you can create an absence schedule to account for this upcoming period. You can also create a template of underlying shifts with defined payouts for the period.
Configuring an absence schedule
When adding an absence schedule, you’re asked to make selections in the following configuration options:
Name | Give your absence schedule a name. |
Shift type | Choose the shift type to be generated. |
Adjust shift length by employment rate | Options to adjust shift length by employment rate, nominal hours, no adjustment, or by "minijobber" - average hours/day. |
This absence schedule should replace | Choose between Scheduled days, Free days, or All days. |
Create on bank holidays | Check if the absence schedule should be generated on days defined as bank holidays. |
Comment | Use this field if you would like to provide a comment/description for this absence schedule. |
Once you’ve saved your newly created absence schedule, you need to click the calendar icon in the Actions column in your list of absence schedule schedules. This button brings you to the day and time modal.
Day and time modal
The adjustment options you selected when adding your absence schedule will interact in different manners with the days and times you configure in this modal - the below table describes how:
Adjustment option | Interaction with Day and time modal |
Employment rate | Absence shifts will be created for the selected days. The start time of said absence shifts will be that which is defined in the start time field if the absence overlaps that time. If the absence starts later within the start-to-end time frame, then the absence shift’s start time will equal that of the absence - as long as the absence doesn’t start after the end of said time frame, in which case no absence shift will be created. The absence shifts' end time will be that of the end time described above for full-time employees and adjusted according to the employment rate for part-time employees. If applicable, bank holiday reduction and day-before bank holiday reduction are considered. Note, however, that an absence shift’s end time can never extend beyond the end time of the absence. |
Nominal hours | Absence shifts will be created for the selected days. The start time of said absence shifts will be that which is defined in the start time field if the absence overlaps that time. If the absence starts later within the start-to-end time frame, then the absence shift’s start time will equal that of the absence - as long as the absence doesn’t start after the end of said time frame, in which case no absence shift will be created. The absence shifts' end time will reflect the employee’s nominal hours. If applicable, bank holiday reduction and day-before bank holiday reduction are considered. Note, however, that an absence shift’s end time can never extend beyond the end time of the absence. |
No adjustment | Absence shifts will be created for the selected days. The start time of said absence shifts will be that which is defined in the start time field if the absence overlaps that time. If the absence starts later within the start-to-end time frame, then the absence shift’s start time will equal that of the absence - as long as the absence doesn’t start after the end of the said time frame, in which case no absence shift will be created. The absence shifts' end time will be defined in the end time field. Bank holiday reductions and day-before bank holiday reductions are not considered. Note that an absence shift’s end time can never extend beyond the end time of the absence. |
Mini jobber | Absence shifts will be created for the selected days. The start time of said absence shifts will be that which is defined in the start time field if the absence overlaps that time. If the absence starts later within the start-to-end time frame, then the absence shift’s start time will equal that of the absence - as long as the absence doesn’t start after the end of the said time frame, in which case no absence shift will be created. We’re currently preparing to potentially change the business logic for this adjustment logic option. Current customers using this option are informed already, but if you’re planning to start using this option, please be aware of this. Reach out to your Quinyx contact if you want to find out more about what the change will potentially entail. |
Calculation of absence hours for "mini jobbers"
Mini job (German: geringfügige Beschäftigung) is a German form of part-time employees that work irregular hours and days per week. For these employees, the employment rate and/or the nominal hours is normally zero and how much they work average per day changes continuously.
To be able to use the absence schedule in order for these employees to receive the correct amount of leave hours there is now a possibility on the agreement and/or agreement template to define and "activate" this calculation for use with the absence schedule.
The definition for calculation is done from Agreement/Agreement template > Agreement details > Working hours > Advanced calculation for part-time employees > Calculate for "minijobbers" avg. hours/day.
You can choose how many weeks back in time the calculation for time/days should be. In the below example, it will calculate 16 weeks back in time from the week before the absence schedule is applied.
A new option is added to the configuration of absence schedules Use "minijobber" avg. hours/day that will adjust the absence schedule in relation to the above calculation instead of employment rate, nominal hours, or no adjustment.
Absence schedules are configured under Account settings > Absence management > Absence schedules > Add / Edit absence schedule.
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When this absence schedule is then used in combination with a leave it will produce the average amount of hours per day for the employee.
User stories
As an account manager with write access to account settings:
- I can navigate to a page where I can see all the existing absence schedules.
- I can edit all existing absence schedules.
- I can add a new absence schedule.
- I can delete an existing absence schedule.
As an account manager with read access to account settings:
- I can navigate to a page where I can see all the existing absence schedules.
- I can see the settings for each individual absence schedule.
- I can edit an existing absence schedule.
- I can delete an existing absence schedule.
