Humaans allows you to build multiple Time away policies to automate calculating and managing holiday allowance for employees. You can build policies for particular regions, contracts and more. Here we will look at Setup, settings and applying these policies.
Adding a new policy
You can add a new policy with the following steps:
In the Home menu, click Settings, then click Time away.
In the Policies screen, click Create policy and the configuration window will appear, where you can name your policy.
Selecting available types of time off
When adding/editing a policy, you can select the all available types of days employees can book, their allowances (if any) and rules on usage periods and accrual.
By default, Paid time off (or however it is named within your organisation) will be available in all policies. Other types will be immediately available if set to default.
New types can also be added to the policy by clicking Add additional type.
Configuring parameters for paid leave
To configure the parameters for leave, follow these steps:
Select the start date for your leave policy under Year start. All policies will run over a 12 month period, accruing paid leave on a daily basis prorated to your overall allowance.
Set the overall number of paid days available and carryover (if any) into the next PTO year under the Annual allowance and Annual carry over allocation fields.
Under Usage, you can set whether employees can book all of their PTO from the beginning of the year, or whether only days accrued so far can be booked.
- If employees can take their full allocation when booking Paid time off, it will show how many days requested and their remaining balance after.
- If the policy only allows for taking accrued days they will see how many days they are taking and their remaining balance of days accrued up until the booking end date.
The Usage period refers to the period for which employees can use their accrued PTO. All days will accrue over 12 months, however you can allow employees to retain and use these days over a longer period. You can select 12, 15, 16 or 18 months depending on what is required for regional carry over and usage of accrued vacation days.
If you would like to set an overall allowance for booking types, but allow employees to book an unlimited number of days, you can enable Unlimited time off. For more on this, see our guide on Unlimited time off.
Configuring other time away types
All other Time off types (Sick leave, Compassionate leave, Parental leave etc.) can be configured under Edit limit types.
For each type you can No limit or a Limited allocations. If a Limited allowance is set, the same flow for Paid time off can be used to configure allowance, carryover and usage.
Configuring Working days
Working types can be used to book and schedule working activity outside of fixed offices or working routines. They will have full visibility in the Who's away screen and any integrations (Gcal, Slack etc.)
As with time off types, these types can have limits set and unique limits per policy over any default settings.
Adding additional types
You can add additional types of bookings to this policy by clicking Add additional type in the top right of the Types section.
You can choose an existing Type by typing in its name and selecting it from your available list.
You can also create and add new types of leave. Start typing out the leave type and if it doesn't already exist click "Add..." to add this new type. Select whether it is a Time off or Working Type and configure allowances.
You can also set this new Type to be included in all new policies as a default booking.
Additional Settings
Bypass working schedule
You can configure your policy to bypass Working days as set in Employment details. This means any day booked (except for public holidays) will deduct from their Paid leave allowance.
Public holidays
By default Employees will be assigned public holiday calendars based on their Place of work. You can select specific public holiday calendars to apply for a policy (for example a unified holiday calendar for the United States) or also to ignore public holidays.
For more details see Creating custom holiday calendars and Managing public holidays and office closures.
Visible balances
You can set what balance of Paid leave is shown to employees at the bottom of Policy Settings
End of year balance
End of year balance
With End of year balance they will see the full balance of available days for this PTO calendar year.
Balance as of today
Balance as of today
With Balance as of today they will see how many days they have accrued up until today.
Both Balances
Both Balances
With Both balances they will see what is available until the end of the PTO year and how many days have been accrued up until that day.
Other balance visibility
When limited allocations are set on leave types a Breakdown of days taken out of days available is visible in employee's Manage time away screen.
When you have configured all booking Types, allocations, Public holiday settings and Balance visibility you can Save your Policy by clicking Save in the top right corner.
Humaans calculates accrual by dividing the number of PTO days in the policy by the number of days in the in year - 365 days (or 366 days if it's a leap year)
# of PTO days in policy
__________________ = Accural rate
# of days in the year
Setting default policies for your offices
You can set a Time away policy to be for a specific office location and can add to individual employees. To set for a specific office location you can select the desired office from your Company section of Settings and click Edit.
At the bottom of the window you can select the default policy for this location and save.
Setting an individual employee's Time away policy
To change an individual employee's Time away policy navigate to their Full profile. In their profile under Manage time away you can select Change allocation in the Balance as of today card.
Here you can choose to change the policy assigned to an Employee. You can backdate a policy to an employee or schedule a future update of policy.
Any changes to their allocation will be reflected in the notes in their Manage time away section.