Workday HCM Feature Alert: Reduce Human Error with Absence Automation

When it comes to prorating Absence entitlements, many businesses usually have a reliance on manual, offline calculations that are prone to human error and introduce doubt (as well as being time consuming to conduct).

With Workday Absence, these calculations can be automated and scheduled to trigger during specific worker events, for whole worker populations (i.e. country/employee type/cost centre), which can save your organisation time and calculation-induced headaches. In this article Jason Hayes (our UK&I Absence Lead) explores this power of automation within Workday.

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Does your organisation spend time and effort in manually prorating various Absence entitlements for workers, offline? If so, Workday Absence can utilise the power of Workday's Calculation Engine to automate these tasks in various employee lifecycle scenarios, increasing efficiency for administrators and in doing so, reduce the possibility of human error and doubt.

I'm pleased to share 3 of the ways in which Workday can be configured to streamline your Absence entitlement proration adjustments; during hire, termination and for part-time workers.

1. Hire

Workday Absence can be configured to automate prorations of entitlements for all eligible workers who have been hired during the holiday year, by the number of days they will work in the remainder of the holiday year. 

Let's take an example of a holiday time off plan that tracks across a calendar year (January to December) with an entitlement of 30 days per year.

If Jane is hired into the business on July 1st, Jane would have exactly 6 months remaining of the current holiday year in which she could be eligible to work. As Jane is eligible to work 50% of the holiday year, Workday can be configured to automatically prorate the standard 30 day entitlement to a 15 day entitlement, upon hire, to reflect the period of time she is working (in this case, 6 out of 12 months of the year).

2. Termination

Workday Absence can also be configured to automate prorations of entitlements for all eligible workers who have been terminated during the holiday year, by the number of days they haven't worked in the holiday year and automatically update their entitlement upon termination to reflect this.

Following on from my example above, if Jane's holiday time off plan tracks across a calendar year and she has received her standard 30 day per year holiday entitlement in January, but is terminated as of July 1st, Workday can automatically prorate Jane's entitlement by 50% (to cover the half year that she hasn't worked).

From here, Workday can determine if Jane has a positive balance from which to pay-out in her final salary, or alternatively, if Jane has over-spent on her balance, deduct (if legislation in the target country allows).

3. FTE Proration

Last, but certainly not least, Workday Absence can automate prorations of entitlements for all eligible workers by FTE, to reflect part-time/flexible working arrangements.

In Jane's example, assuming that she works 4 days per week and has a resulting FTE of 80%, Workday can automatically prorate the regular 30 day holiday entitlement to account for Jane's FTE and grant her an entitlement that reflects 80% of 30 days; totalling 24 days per year.

Curious to know more?

If a pen, paper and calculator have been the backbone of your HR team's day-to-day activities for quite some time, we can help. Let us explore how Workday could implement your organisation's BAU automation in the world of Absence and Leave.

If this is something that you’re interested in, please get in touch.