1H 2024 Release Highlights of SAP Best Practices for SAP SuccessFactors Time Management

[NeeleshKamath]

Dear All,

Hope you are doing fine.

I am excited to share the new features that we are planning to deliver as part of the Best Practices package for Time Management 1H 2024 via the upgrade center. We have some new features (new country localizations) along with enhancements for existing countries. We actually delivered a lot of new features in this release, and this is what makes it exciting for those of you who are looking for any accelerated implementations

Disclaimer: Please note these features are currently available only on preview. The final version will be updated on RTC or production date for 1H 2024.

Time OFF

Finland Localization

We now provide localized configuration for Finland (FIN) Time Off. By applying the country-specific configuration block, you will get sample configuration for various leave types like Vacations, Illness, Child Care, Study, Unpaid Absence, Birth of Child, Military Reserve, Parental Allowance etc

Finland has complex vacation laws and lot of quotas which have to be handled via different time account types. In phase 1, we deliver baseline configurations to cater to 14 days rule. The 14 day rule covers those who work for at least 14 days every month under their contract. They accrue holiday for each calendar month when they have accumulated at least 14 days at work or the equivalent of 14 days at work

 Here are the different time accounts and their terminologies.

First the Holiday credit year or account gets monthly accruals of 2 /2.5 days depending on the employee service period. Next the accruals are transferred from Holiday Credit year to Vacation account at the end of holiday credit period

The below are some of the examples that demonstrate this

Some more examples of time account and accrual process (movement between different accounts)

Further certain leave types impact the monthly accruals. These leave types have individual limits. Any working days and working hours when the employee has been unable to work for the reasons set out below are considered to be the equivalent of days at work:

1)Pregnancy Leave: The limit is 40 days and days counted from Monday to Saturday. The absence is counted as working days which accrues holiday quotas.
2) Parental Allowance Leave. The absence can also be a part day and in several periods. Limit is 160 + 160 = 320 days for one child and days counted from Monday to Saturday. 160 days of the absence is counted as working days. Only 160 days will accrue holiday quotas
2) Illness or accident : the maximum is 75 working days in one vacation year;
3) Medical rehabilitation : the maximum is 75 working days in one vacation year
4) Study leave, maximum is 30 working days in one vacation year, and only if the employee has returned to work immediately after the study leave;
5) Lay-offs,  the maximum is 30 working days at a time; Only one layoff event is supported for now

Till the above limits is not breached, the number of working days is not reduced for that month (for 14-day rule calculation of accruals)

To check the detailed configurations, you can choose to upgrade the content using upgrade center.

IRELAND Localization

We now provide localized configuration for Ireland (IRE) Time Off. By applying the country-specific configuration block, you will get sample configuration for various leave types like Annual Leave, Give Time Leave , Sickness, Maternity, Paternity , Adoption, Sabbatical , emergency ,family care etc

Some key points:

• Yearly accruals of 26 days with proration logic for Hiring and Termination cases
• Give Time Leave of 3 days for personal purposes
• Complex validations to check different leave limits across a rolling period of 1 year for emergency and family care leaves.
• Sabbatical leave – Employee should complete 1 year in current position and 4 years in the organization
• Parental Leave – Parental leave lets parents take unpaid leave from work to spend time looking after their children. You can take up to 26 weeks’ parental leave for each eligible child before their 12th birthday. Since this is a custom solution, we have not included this in Best practices package as such , but if you are interested to explore this, you can read my blog below to decipher the custom approach

https://community.sap.com/t5/human-capital-management-blogs-by-sap/parental-leave-ireland-solution-p...

This solution is not just restricted for Ireland but can be applied to any country with similar requirements.

To check the detailed configurations, you can choose to upgrade the content using upgrade center (Follow the same approach as Finland listed above)

Oman Time Off  Enhancements

We did some major changes for OMAN in 2405  w.r.t some new labor laws that were enforced from 2024.

IF you want to deploy them, please do review them to ensure that they meet your specific requirements.

The below are some of the key changes:

1. Caregiver leave: 15 days per year are given to Omani workers to accompany a patient they are related to up to second degree. 
2. Paternity leave: 7 days, provided that the child is born alive, and the father takes this leave within 98 days (about 3 months) of the child's birth
3. Bereavement leave: taken by a non-Muslim female for 14 days in the event of the death of her husband. 
4. Childcare leave: Unpaid leave for a female worker for up to 1 year; provided that the employee bears all contributions to the Social Protection Fund
5. Special Unpaid leave: An indefinite period of unpaid leave, provided that the employee bears the cost of all contributions to the social protection fund during the leave period
6. Nursing break: 1 hour per day for a nursing worker from the end of maternity leave for a period of 1 year
7. Maternity leave: has increased from 50 days to 98 days to cover the period before and after childbirth. It can be taken 14 days before the delivery date
8. Sick leave: total annual sick leave has increased from 10 weeks or 70 days to 182 days and employees shall be entitled to:

• The first 21 days, full pay (100%).
• From day 22-35, at 75% pay.
• From day 36-70, at 50% pay.
• From day 71-182 at 35% pay.

     9. Bereavement leave: in the event of the death of a wife or child; extended from 3 to 10 days.

Again if you want to take an advantage of accelerated deployment, you can deploy them using upgrade center as highlighted for Finland already above

 

Time Forms Content

Companies may need to provide employees with official documents detailing the information kept in their Time Management data along with employment and personal details.

This SAP Best Practices for Time Management now provides the following common configuration:

Time Form Templates

•              Holiday Letter Example
•              Maternity Leave Example
•              Paid Annual Leave Example
•              Strike Letter Example

And top also Role-Based Permissions for Administrators to manage time form templates and generate time forms.

With this, you don’t have to set these templates manually from scratch. It saves a lot of efforts and cost to use and deploy them. Please note this requires document generation to be enabled as well.

Here are few examples of some generated sample documents.

Maternity letter

Paid Annual Leave

These predefined templates and configuration is also part of our Upgrade center automation. You could use the below upgrade to apply these changes and benefit from a quick accelerated implementation

Enhanced Absence Counting Rules ( Singapore)

When an employee applies leave that includes days in which only half day working is planned depending on the work schedule , the deduction quantity should be 0.5 in the corresponding time account (Considering time type unit is days here).

Example:

In this case a total of 4.5 days is deducted for a week of absence.

The best practices package for Time Off Singapore comes with preconfigured absence counting rules to tackle above requirements, and you don’t have to explicitly implement them from scratch

You could use the upgrade center to deploy the above config for Singapore.

Additionally, If you are also using package configuration manager for building your packages, you could also deploy the absence counting 2.0 sample rules from PCM

Time Tracking

United Kingdom Localization

This comes up with a preconfigured time valuation rules for United Kingdom to handle Overtime rules for weekdays, holidays, Saturdays and Sundays for part timers and full time employees.

This is just the phase 1 of localization. We plan to extend this package in future with more region-specific requirements.

In UK, we have a specific requirement around part timers which is kind of unique to UK and European regions. There is the regulation that part time employees are entitled for an overtime premium only when they have reached the full-time equivalent regular hours. 

For example:

Part time employee will get the Overtime @1.0  for additional hours worked upto the FTE hours i.e 40 hours per week . Any hours over and beyond FTE hours will be paid at the same rate as the full time employee. Part time employees will get the weekend premium rate irrespective of if they have completed the FTE hours or not.

Employee planned working time = 30 hours/Week
Total working time submitted and approved = 45 hours
Overtime hours = 15 hours
FTE threshold hours = 40 Hours/Week
Calculation:
Delta hours to ensure completion upto FTE Hours = FTE hours(40) - planned hours(30) = 10 hours
Total overtime hours = 15 hours
First 10 hours i.e delta will be paid at the overtime@1.0 and the remaining (15-10) 5 hours will be paid at overtime1.5
Result: OT@1.0 = 10 hours and OT@1.5 = 5 hours

You could avail this configuration using UK specific time tracking package in upgrade center

South Korea Localization

This comes up with a preconfigured time valuation rules for South Korea to handle Overtime and Cross Midnight premium payouts based on the below schedule and rules

You could avail this configuration using Korea specific time tracking package in upgrade center

Flexible Period Time Valuations

We delivered a sample time recording profile which can track overtime using flexible time valuation periods like a yearly overtime. For example: Alerts are generated if employee breaches a limit of 220 overtime hours in a year. This is using the concept of time containers.

This was also patched as part of 2311. This is just FYI in case you are not aware of this.

This particular feature is part of Time Tracking Core Setup which means this can be applied in general for any country.

This is it w.r.t the enhancements and new features that we introduced in 1H 2405 for time management best practices. I hope this adds value in accelerating any implementations that you have.

For more information on best practices, please do visit our help page in

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_BEST_PRACTICES_FOR_HXM

Thanks

Neelesh

Senior Product Manager

SAP Best Practices For HCM SuccessFactors