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e-Leave (Paperless Leave Management Software)

What Is a Leave Management System?
- Leave management is an important HR process that manages employee leave applications / time-off requests. An efficient leave management system will automate the workflow of leave applications and route the requests to designated managers for approval / rejection. In the case of multi-level approval setup, when the leave applications are approved by the first reviewer, it will be automatically forwarded to the second or third managers for further review. Besides, Leave Application Policy could be enforced to ensure compliance of employees' applications. For visibility and planning purposes, all approved leaves will be displayed on a leave planner calendar.
Why Do You Need a Leave Management System?
- Automated Approval Workflow - Instead of manually passing paperworks around the office to wait for the approvals from different managers, a leave management system will take care of it automatically
- Control - Leave application policies could be automatically enforced, such as number of days in advance for leave applications, or whether emergency leave is allowed etc.
- Accessibility - Employees will be able to apply for leaves, check leave entitlements and review leave applications anytime, anywhere on any device
- Efficiency - Instant notification of leave requests and approval status
- Flexibility - Escalation and cancellation of leave requests by Administrator if necessary. Different leave approval workflow could be assigned to employees of different job natures
- Transparency - Employees will be able to find out their leave balance as well as all past leave application records
- Visibility - Employees will be able to find out leave status of other colleagues and plan their own leaves accordingly
- Accuracy - Leave balances will be updated automatically according to leave earning policies and historical leave applications
- Better Productivity - HR managers could focus on other tasks with the time saved from managing leave manually
- Environmentally Friendly - Paper-less workflow
- It's FREE! - Secure. No hidden cost. No strings attached. Unlimited Data Storage.
Use Case Example
- Let's start with a common use case in most work places. Suppose we have the following employees with the relevant roles:
  1. Emma (ordinary Employee)
  2. Mary (Line Manager of Emma)
  3. Daisy (Head of Department)
  4. Anne (HR.my Administrator)
  For this typical scenario, Anne sets up the Default Leave Approval Workflow according to the company's existing practice:
  1. All new leave applications will require the approval of employee's Line Manager
  2. If the leave application is rejected by the Line Manager, the leave application is concluded as rejected
  3. Should the leave application be approved by the Line Manager, then Head of Department will review the leave application
- Emma needs to apply for a day off under Medical Leave. She logs in her Employee Web Account and goes to Leave ❯ Application. Here she will be able to check all available Leave Entitlements for current year and to submit a new leave application for this purpose. To support her application, she attaches a snapshot of the medical certificate issued by her family doctor.
- Upon submission of Emma's leave application, Mary (i.e. her Line Manager) together with Anne will get email notifications on her new leave application.
- Mary logs in her Employee Web Account and she may go to one of the following menus to review Emma's new leave application:
  - Leave ❯ Planner where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Calendar view
  - Leave ❯ Schedule where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Table view
  - Leave ❯ Review where all leave applications are shown in a List view
  Mary checks the leave application details and the attached medical certificate in order to make an informed decision.
- Mary decides that Emma's leave application is justified and she approves Emma's leave application.
- An email notification is immediately sent to the following parties upon Mary's approval:
  1. Emma
  2. Daisy (Head of Department)
  3. Anne (HR.my Administrator)
- Daisy logs in her Employee Web Account and she may go to one of the following menus to review Emma's new leave application:
  - Leave ❯ Planner where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Calendar view
  - Leave ❯ Schedule where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Table view
  - Leave ❯ Review where all leave applications are shown in a List view
  Daisy checks the leave application details and the attached medical certificate in order to make an informed decision.
- Finally, Daisy is satisfied with Emma's reason for this leave application, and she approves it.
- An email notification is immediately sent to the following parties upon Daisy's approval:
  1. Emma
  2. Anne (HR.my Administrator)
Enabling Employee Self Service Leave Application (e-Leave)
- To start using the e-Leave function, each employee has to sign up their Employee Web Account first. Employees would need an invitation from their Employer in order to do so. To invite employees to sign up for their Employee Web Account, you may go to Employee ❯ Web Account, then select the employees that you would like to invite.
- The invited employees will receive an invitation email with a unique Invitation Code. Follow the instructions in the invitation email to complete the sign-up process (Note: after signing up his/ her Web Account, he/ she will receive another email with instructions for account activation).
- After completing the Employee Web Account sign-up process, your employees can start applying for their leaves via Leave ❯ Application. In the Leave Application dashboard, besides applying for new leaves, an employee may also:
  - Entitlement tab - check new Leave Entitlement and Balances, past leave application Statistics (such as number of leaves applied, approved or rejected)
  - Application tab - check Leave Application approval status, Historical Leave Records, view the Management Remark for leaves (such as why a leave application has been rejected, or why is it still pending approval)
Setting up Leave Type
- To start using the Leave Management function, you will need to visit your Employer account's Leave module.
- First, visit Leave ❯ Leave Type. Check if existing Leave Types are sufficient. If necessary, add new or modify any of the existing Leave Types.
- Leave Unit. You will notice that there are 2 types of Leave Unit, i.e. "Day" or "Hour". A Leave Unit is the logical unit for leave application time span, for instance, a Leave Unit of "Day" means usually the specific Leave Type is applied in terms of number of days. Typically, you will specify "Day" as the Leave Unit for most of the Leave Types, but for certain use cases such as employee "Time Off", you may want to use "Hour" as the Leave Unit instead. Nevertheless, even though a Leave Type may be specified with "Day" as the Leave Unit, you may still allow employees to apply for half-day or half-hour leave in their leave applications.
- Day Count. Most Leave Types will use Workday as day count basis. For example, if you apply leaves from this Friday until next Monday, only 2 days will be counted (i.e. Friday and Monday as workdays, minus Saturday and Sunday as rest days). However, certain types of leaves (such as Maternity Leave) when taken in a block period, will include any non-working days, rest days and public holidays which fall during that period. In this case you will need to set the Day Count to Calendar Day.
  Workdays and Rest days are set up via Leave ❯ Workday
  
  Holidays are set up via Leave ❯ Holiday
- Color. You may assign a specific color for the Leave Type, so that it would be easily recognizable on the Leave ❯ Schedule.
- Leave Application Policy. You may enforce an automated rule set for leave application under any Leave Type. An employee will only be able to submit a leave application if it meets the conditions of the rules. For instance:
  - how many days in advance that an employee needs to apply for ANNUAL leave that is more than 3 days long?
  - is an emergency leave allowed?
  - is an attachment of Medical Certificate required for a MEDICAL leave?
  - is negative balance allowed?
  - should an employee state the reason for the application?
  Note that Leave Application Policy will only be enforced on employee submission, this will not affect submission by Administrator or HR Roles.
Setting up Leave Entitlement
- Before an employee is able to apply for a leave, the relevant Leave Entitlement must be set up first. For instance: 14 days entitlement for Annual Leave, 10 days entitlement for Medical Leave etc.
- Vist Leave ❯ Management to set up each employee's Leave Entitlements. You may set up employee Leave Entitlements one by one manually, or Import Leave Entitlements for all of the employees in one go.
- Manual One-by-one. If you wish to set up Leave Entitlement for a particular employee, you will need to select the employee first, then click at the button in the Entitlement tab to add new leave entitlements. If you wish to View, Modify or Delete the setting of existing leave entitlements, just click at the leave entitlement record will do.
- Import In-one-go. However, if your organization has more than a handful of employees, it may be easier and faster for you to set up your employees' Leave Entitlement data via the Leave Entitlement Import feature. Even if your employee headcount is not big, the import feature still makes a great time-saver, as you may
  1. Save yourself a great deal of time setting up new Leave Entitlements for upcoming years
  2. Quickly on-board a new employee
    Just create several Excel templates containing different leave entitlements for employees according to their Job, Department, Level etc. Whenever there is a new hire, you may instantly set up the new employee by importing the leave entitlements from the correct Excel template.
- Add New Entitlement Year. If you would like to add previous years of Leave records into HR.my, you may click at the button in the Year field on the toolbar to add new years.
- Earning Policy. Earning Policy is used to determine how an employee earns the leave entitlement. You can always change or add new policies to suit your purpose. In each "Earning Policy", you may specify the "Method" of earning, "Accrual Period" and whether the leaves are "Earned At" the End or Start of Accrual Period. Also, note that the earned leave is denominated in the Leave Type's "Leave Unit", in either "Day" or "Hour".
  Method - To specify how is the leave entitlement earned:
  1. Earned Immediately - Entire leave entitlement will be earned immediately at the "Earning Start" date. Typical use cases include Hospitalization or Maternity Leaves.
  2. Prorated - With this option, an employee will earn a portion of total entitlement with each month or day served, depending on the "Accrual Period" setting (Monthly or Daily). Typical use cases include Annual Leave or other paid leaves.
  3. Custom Monthly Allocation - This is a very flexible option that allows you to specify leave earnings for each service month (or calendar month, depending on the Earning Start date). Typical use include organizations that grant leave earning in accordance to certain rules, such as yearly entitlement of 15 days with 1 day for each of the initial 11 service months, and 4 days in the last service month. The leave earned in each prior month will be accumulated in the following months, but you may use Leave Entitlement to cap the maximum accumulated earning allowed.
  4. Not Required - "Earning Start" date is not applicable and the entire leave entitlement will be available without going through earning process.
  Accrual Period - To specify if leave is earned on a monthly or daily basis. Only applicable when "Method" is set to Prorated.
  
  Earned At - Whether earned leave will be credited at the End or Start of the "Accrual Period" (end of the month or day).
- Earning Start. Earning Start is used in conjunction with "Earning Policy" to determine the first date that an employee starts to earn current leave entitlement. For instance, if an employee joins at 15 June 2016 with a yearly Annual Leave entitlement of 12 days, then by 15 July 2016 he/ she would have earned 1 day of Annual Leave. The employee would have zero Annual Leave entitlement for the period before 15 July 2016. With each full month served, he/ she will continue to earn the rest of the Annual Leave entitlement until the maximum allowed.
  "Earning Start" is not applicable if Earning Policy is Not Required.
- Valid From. You may use Valid From to specify the first day when the leave entitlement could be applied. Typical use cases include:
  1. To support Leave Entitlements which do not start or end with calendar year, such as those of contract based employees. For example, a contract that starts from 1 June and ends at 31 May next year will usually come with Leave Entitlements that coincide with the contractual period.
  2. To allow employees to apply some specially granted ad-hoc leaves, that could only be applied within particular date range.
- Valid Until. You may use Valid Until to extend or shorten the entitlement validity period. Typical use cases include:
  1. To achieve the effect of allowing certain leave entitlements to carry over ALL unused leave automatically to the next year. In this case, an employee will need to switch to previous entitlement year in order to apply for the unutilized leaves. Currently HR.my supports unutilized leave carry over of up to a maximum of 20 years.
  2. To allow employees to apply their current year leave entitlement in the next calendar year. For example, if the "Valid Until" date of Annual Leave is set to 31 March 2017, that means employees would be able to apply their leave application in 2016 for any date prior to 31 March 2017, such as applying for a Block Leave around Christmas 2016 until sometime after the first week of 2017.
  3. To support Leave Entitlements which do not start or end with calendar year, such as those of contract based employees. For example, a contract that starts from 1 June and ends at 31 May next year will usually come with Leave Entitlements that coincide with the contractual period.
- Entitled. This is where you will enter the total entitlement of a leave type over 1 Year duration. If an employee joins the employer in the midway, do remember to prorate the Entitled days accordingly. Say if an employee is entitled to 12 days ANNUAL leave each year, and the leave entitlement shall start from 1 Jan till 31 Dec for each calendar year. In this case, if a new employee joins the employer on 1 Jul (with 6 months left in the calendar year), then the Entitled days should be 12 x (6 months / 12 months) = 6 days.
- Carried Over. Carried Over field allows you to enter the amount of unutilized leave from previous years. If your company policy requires that all or certain number of carry over will expire automatically in the new entitlement year, you may easily handle such use case with the help of the Valid Until field. For instance:
  1. Say your company's Annual Leave is 20 days per year, and each employee could carry over maximum 5 days of unutilized Annual Leave each year. However, the carry over will expire at the 31st March of the year.
  2. You will then add 2 leave entitlements for each employee with such unutilized Annual Leave carry over. The first is the regular Annual Leave entitlement of 20 days. For the second leave entitlement, you will need to add a new Leave Type of "Annual Leave - Carry Over" first, then set the Carried Over to 5 days or less (depending on employees), and set the Valid Until field to 31st March of that year.
- Set Up Partial Entitlement. Usually a new employee may join an organization anytime within a year. For organizations that Leave Entitlements are calculated from the same Earning Start date, you may need to set up partial entitlements for such employees. Example:
  - Your organization's unified Earning Start date is 1 of January each year
  - All employees are entitled to 12 days of Annual Leave which will be earned on a monthly basis over a year
  - A new employee joins at 1 February 2023. Which means she will only earn a total of 11 days over the remaining 11 months
  - As such, you may use the Carried Over field to deduct the amount she is not entitled to
  - Her partial entitlement setup will be:
    1. Earning Policy: Prorated over a year, earned on monthly basis
    2. Earning Start: 1 Jan 2023
    3. Valid From: 1 Feb 2023
    4. Valid Until: 31 Dec 2023
    5. Entitled: 12
    6. Carried Over: -1
Setting up Leave Approval Workflow
- While your employees could apply leaves without having to set up Leave Approval Workflow, such leave applications could only be approved or rejected by HR.my Administrator, HR.my Manager or any HR Role assigned to handle leave applications. Therefore it is strongly recommended to set up Leave Approval Workflow in order to fully empower your employees.
Planning & Reviewing Leave Applications with Leave Planner/ Schedule/ Review
- When leave applications are submitted by employees, HR.my Administrator or other Leave Approvers will get notified through email, and they could access one of the following menus in order to approve or reject employee leave applications.
  - Leave ❯ Planner where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Calendar view
  - Leave ❯ Schedule where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Table view
  - Leave ❯ Review where all leave applications are shown in a List view
  Likewise, employees will also get notified about their leave application review status.
- Spam/ Junk Mail Filter. If you do not receive any email notifications for employee leave applications, it is very likely that the email notifications may have been blocked by your Junk Mail filter or email server. Remember to add both noreply@hr.my and support@hr.my to your email whitelist if you do not wish to miss the email notifications for employee leave applications.
- Workforce Planning. Leave Approvers will be able to view Approved and Pending Approval leave applications that are wihtin their review scope in different dimensions, thus enabling you to plan for workforce availability before approving any leave application via proper examination of current and upcoming employees' schedule of leave. In both Leave Planner and Leave Schedule, Holidays and Weekends in a particular month are highlighted (in customizable colors), so that Leave Approvers could make an informed decision before approving any leave applications.
  - Leave ❯ Planner where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Calendar view
  - Leave ❯ Schedule where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Table view, with options to filter by Department or by Branch
  - Leave ❯ Review where all leave applications are shown in a List view, sorted by the leave start date in descending order
- Leave Review Scope for Supervisor. If an employee is holding some supervisory roles (e.g. a Line Manager to some other employees, or as a Head of Department or Head of Branch), then the employee will be able to approve/ reject the leave applications if his/ her supervisory role is assigned in the Leave Approval Workflow.
  Line Manager is assigned via Employee ❯ Placement
  
  Head of Department is assigned via Employer ❯ Department
  
  Head of Branch is assigned via Employer ❯ Branch
- Leave Review Scope for Custom Role. If an employee is a Custom Role (e.g. Boss, Business Owner, CEO, HR for Leave Review etc) assigned to certain Leave Approval Workflows, then he/ she would also be able to approve/ reject the leave applications for employees whose Leave Workflow is assigned to the pertinent Leave Approval Workflows.
  Custom Role is assigned via Employee ❯ Custom Role
  
  An employee's Leave Workflow is assigned via Employee ❯ Employment Terms
- Visibility of Other Employees' Leave to non-Approver Employee. Depending on the setting in Leave ❯ Setting » Leave Planner / Schedule » Visible Employee Leaves, Leave Planner and Leave Schedule may reveal Approved and Pending Approval leave applications of other employees within the same Department, Branch or even whole Organization to ordinary employees who are without leave approving duty. This provides better visibility of other employees' attendance and helps them plan their leave applications accordingly.
- Visibility of Other Employees' Leave to Supervisor. Regardless of the setting in Leave ❯ Setting » Leave Planner / Schedule » Visible Employee Leaves, if an employee is holding some supervisory roles (e.g. a Line Manager to some other employees, or as a Head of Department or Head of Branch), then he/ she would ALWAYS be able to view the leaves planned and approved for other employees who are connected to his/ her supervisory roles. For instance, as a Head of Deprtment, an employee will be able to view the leave applications of other employees who are within the same department (even though he/ she may not be assigned with the leave approving duty).
Leave Management Setting
- If you want to improve the visibility of leave applications among employees, you may consider widening/ limiting the leave visibility scope by changing the options of Visible Employee Leaves in the Leave Planner / Schedule section of Leave ❯ Setting:
  1. Self (This is the default option, which limits the employee visibility to his/ her leave applications only)
  2. Same Department
  3. Same Branch
  4. Same Department / Branch (Employees in the same Department + Employees in the same Branch)
  5. All
Leave Cancellation
- Depending on the leave application's review status, a leave application can be cancelled or deleted by an employee according to the following scenarios:
  1. An employee can cancel and delete newly submitted leave applications.
  2. An employee can cancel and withdraw leave applications that have already started the review process, but not yet finalized (e.g. 1st Approver has already approved the leave application, but the 2nd Approver has yet to review the leave application). In this case, a withdrawn leave application will still appear in the leave transaction records of the employee.
  3. An employee can request to cancel leave applications that have already been approved. Such request has to be handled by HR.my Administrator, HR.my Manager or any HR Role assigned to handle leave applications. You may visit one of the following menus to review the cancellation request.
    - Leave ❯ Planner where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Calendar view
    - Leave ❯ Schedule where leave applications are displayed in a Monthly Table view
    - Leave ❯ Review where all leave applications are shown in a List view
    Leave applications that are requested to be cancelled will be highlighted in amber color. When you open up the Leave Application window, you may either click at the Approve button to change the status to "Cancelled", or click at the Reject button do dismiss the cancellation request.