“Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so.” At least that’s what one erudite character opined in one of my favorite books*. In my
1H 2020 release blog, I challenged you to identify a quote from Shakespeare, so I thought I’d go more “medium brow” this time. (See the answer at the end of this blog…)
Time does seem to be on everyone’s mind in a year that has been defined by lockdowns, sheltering in place, furloughs, isolation from family and friends and working from home, with a myriad social media memes around none of us knowing which day it is.
Despite this confusion, the need to not only make the best of our time, but to be able to manage it, record it, and be accurately paid for it has not gone away. In fact, you could make the case that it has become more important.
Here in SAP SuccessFactors-land, we have been busy over the last 6 months to add significant enhancements to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Time & Attendance that benefit your organization and your employees during this challenging period.
Would you like to know more? You would? Excellent! Please keep scrolling…I’ll try to be succinct.
Leave Purchase
What is it?
You can now offer your employees a self-service option to purchase additional leave if they need additional time off beyond their accrued balance or vacation entitlement. The amount required to purchase the leave can be spread across several payroll periods as recurring deductions. These deductions can be sent to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll or any other payroll system you are using. This provides the other side of the coin to the ability to allow employees to sell leave, which we delivered in the H1 2020 release.
Purchase Leave
How does this help with the employee experience?
If I need additional time to take care of family issues, for example, this allows me to do so without taking leave without pay, and I can spread the deductions taken to pay for this additional leave over a period that is manageable for me.
How does this help your organization?
You can be in control of this process by setting up eligibility rules to determine
which of your employees can request to purchase leave, and also
when they can request the purchase. You may wish to use these rules to limit the time period when this is service is available to your employees
Giving your employees more control over their time is always a good thing for them, which in turn leads to happier, more productive employees who not only perform better, but are more engaged at work, and become ambassadors for your brand.
More information
Record Absences Across Midnight
What is it?
This has been one of our most requested enhancements that we have seen in our customer enhancement tool, so we’re very happy to be able to provide this self-service option to allow employees to record absences across midnight, for example if they need to request time off for all or part of a night shift that spans midnight.
We have changed the work schedule pattern to allow schedules to cross midnight to allow these time off requests. Note that this is not yet supported for attendances in the time sheet; only for absences.
Recording an absence across midnight on a mobile device
How does this help with the employee experience?
Like all the best ideas, it’s really quite simple. Employees requesting time off for a night shift no longer need to submit two separate requests: one from 8pm until 11:59pm and another from midnight until 4am. The system will allow them to request it in one action.
More information
Team Absence Calendar Enhancement
What is it?
In the H1 2020 release, I told you about how you can now view the team absence calendar for the week or the whole month. Well, we realized that we should also provide the option to view this on a daily basis too, updated to show the daily work schedule information and the absences for a specific day or shift.
Team Absence Calendar
Conclusion
I hope that this has given you a good insight into what to expect for your time and attendance management within SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central in the 2H 2020 release.
If you have questions, please leave then in the comments below, or ask them in the Employee Central section of the
SAP SuccessFactors customer community.
To see and hear more about these enhancements, please
watch this two-minute video by Daniela Goerke from Product Management.
For information on release highlights across the SAP SuccessFactors HXM suite,
see this blog.
In conclusion I should like you to keep this in mind as we wend our merry way through this thing called life:
“Time flies like the wind, but fruit flies like bananas”.
*The reward for reading (or scrolling) this far is the answer to the literary quote question: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.