More than just payroll - How PayFit makes managing leaves & absences a breeze for UK HR teams

Managing leaves and absences is just another of those reactive, admin-heavy tasks that HR teams would rather not have to think too much about. Strategically-minded UK HR leaders are turning in greater numbers to software that not only takes the legwork out of leave and absence management, but syncs up nicely with payroll too, negating the need for manual pay calculations and helping to save bags of time.

So without further ado…here’s leave and absence management with PayFit!

PayFit’s Leave management module

We're a payroll software at heart, sure, but here at PayFit we understand that great HR is about taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. Spending loads of time on payroll, or on managing leaves and absences, is no fun for anyone. So we thought we’d combine the two into one platform, and ensure that all fiddly pay and leave calculations are automated and nicely synced up.

Big picture outlook? Time back in HR’s schedule for impactful and strategic projects, less mistakes, empowered managers and employees, and fewer queries.

New for 2024…The Employee Absence Space 2.0!

Before we get stuck in, we wanted to share that we've recently given the employee absence space a bit of a spruce up, improving both the experience and usability for employees, as well as making it much more mobile friendly. 

The changes allow employees to clearly see all the leave they’ve got coming up in one place, broken down by the type of leave, leave period, duration and whether it’s pending, approved or has been cancelled - from any device.

In addition to this, employees can check their leave balance and even see when other colleagues are off through the central calendar before submitting their own requests.

It’s part of our ongoing commitment to help create fulfilling workplace experiences for our users, regardless of the significance of the task at hand.

Now, let’s dive deeper into how our much-loved payroll software brings leave and absence management system functionality into the mix for UK businesses too.

Empowering your people with their own portal

Every HR professional has experienced it at some point (indeed, perhaps you still do!). Staff would email you directly asking to book time off, or to let you know they’re off sick. You’d then have to cross-check the company leave spreadsheet (or shared calendar) to see if there was availability, approve or deny the request yourself, remember to update payroll if it’s unpaid leave or time off for casual hours staff…the list goes on.

PayFit puts leave and absence management back in the hands of your people, with all the functionality and information they’ll need visible in the same place as their payslips. So that means a place to request leave, see who else is off and when, and how much leave they’ve got left to use. Once requests are confirmed, these automatically get added to the next payroll, so there’s no need for any manual calculations or to record anything yourself. 

On the topic of payslips, ours clearly display all leaves and absences information in real time, including any unpaid leave, and how this might have affected any pay items, for greater visibility and fewer questions for you or your HR team.

Delegating absence management to managers

PayFit lets you assign managers to validate all employee leave requests, which they receive notifications for automatically. They can view these, the duration and type of absence, and then validate or refuse at their discretion.

This, together with the fact that all validated requests and associated calculations are handled and reflected on the payroll automatically, helps to remove leave and absence management from HR’s agenda entirely.

Other cool things you can do with leave and absence management using PayFit

Whilst exceptionally useful both for freeing up your time, and helping to create a great experience for your employees, the usefulness of PayFit’s leave and absence management system doesn’t end there. Here’s just a few other things it can streamline:

Pay holiday pay based on average earnings

Calculating holiday pay manually for your staff can be tricky at the best of times, but where part-time employees or workers who don’t have fixed hours are concerned, things can become a minefield. Thankfully, PayFit retrieves 52 weeks of pay from the previous 104, then automatically calculates the average daily rate for you. This will then be clearly shown on the employee’s payslip.

Set up and manage a Buy or Sell Holiday scheme

Holiday purchase schemes can be a great way to attract and retain staff, as it allows employees to take unpaid leave when they have used up their standard entitlement. PayFit allows admins to set up a buy scheme, and automatically calculates the daily rate, total value of holidays bought, and the remaining deduction amounts.

For annual leave sale schemes, whereby employees sell back any unused leave to the business in return for the equivalent pay, once set up admins can choose whether the payment should be made to the employee as a monthly instalment or one-off sum. PayFit once again automatically calculates the daily rate, plus the monthly or one-off payment to be made back to the employee.

Set up and manage an Occupational Sick Pay (OSP) scheme

Although optional for employers, having occupational sick pay (OSP) in place means that you are still giving qualified employees full pay even if they are absent from work due to sickness, as opposed to paying the mandatory statutory sick pay.

You can set up your OSP scheme at a company level and this will automatically apply to any employee who is away on sickness leave and eligible for your scheme. OSP is displayed separately from statutory sick pay on the employee's payslip so they can clearly see the breakdown of earnings. Admins can enable a qualifying period so that OSP only applies to employees who have been working at the company for a certain length of time.

Run reports on employee leaves

The first step to becoming more strategic as an HR function is being able to access clear, accurate and actionable data. It helps get you a seat at the highest table, too, if you’re able to demonstrate to the C-suite how HR metrics are having an impact on productivity and the bottom line. 

PayFit comes loaded with pre-set reports related to leaves, showing a breakdown of holiday, sick leave, parental leave and more, either by current tax year or a particular month and across different departments. This way, you can quickly spot trends in how your teams are taking leave, address any areas of concern, and make strategic decisions based on data, rather than hunches. Pretty cool, right?

To sum up…

PayFit’s leaves & absences module gives UK HR teams time back for more strategic work, empowers managers and employees and helps to create a great all round leave management experience.

Amongst other things, it enables:

• a smoother experience for new employees by allowing admins to create an onboarding questionnaire to gather employee information;

• employees to manage their leaves from their employee space;

• HR teams to create an org chart and make it visible to only admins, or employees too;

• workflows for indirect managers to receive requests to approve leaves, expenses and time-tracking when the employee's usual manager isn't available;

Admins can allow employees to book their own leave, with managers being notified by email when a request is made. Once the manager approves or declines a request, the employee is notified via email. Employees can see all leaves in their personal space, as well as entitlement (available, taken, used), and this is also displayed on payslips. 

PayFit calculates leave-related payments, such as buying or selling annual leave, time off in lieu, or payment in lieu of holiday, automatically, and adjusts any future pay runs accordingly.

To find out more about how PayFit helps to streamline, automate and speed up your admin-heavy HR work, book in a quick platform demo by clicking the link below.