Leave Approval Workflow (e-Leave)

1. What is a Leave Approval Workflow?
   • A Leave Management System includes an automated way to forward the leave application from one Approver to another for review purpose, such as when the leave application is approved by the Line Manager of the applicant, it will be automatically routed to the Head of Department for subsequent review.
   • Whether the leave application is approved or rejected, the applicant and the Administrators will always be notified of the review result.
   • In the whole review cycle, the review status of each Approver at various workflow stages will be traced in the Leave Approval Workflow History, including changes performed by HR Roles (such as Escalation of application to the next workflow stage) and to provide a full audit trail to each leave application approval process. In addition, you may also find out from the workflow history which reviewer's approval is pending for the current workflow stage.
   • For a typical use case of Leave Approval Workflow, please check out the example in Leave Management.
2. Setting up Leave Approval Workflow
   • To enable Leave Approval Workflow, you have to at least set up the DEFAULT workflow via Leave ❯ Approval Workflow.
   • Default Workflow. Click at the DEFAULT workflow record to edit it. You are now presented with 6 Approver levels, from 1st Approver to 6th Approver, and all of them are optional for the DEFAULT workflow (for additional workflows, at least 1st Approver must be assigned). 1st Approver must be assigned before you could assign higher level leave approvers.
   • Multiple Workflows. In case your organization requires different Leave Approval Workflow for different groups of employee, this could be easily done by setting up additional workflow with different approver assignments. For instance,
     • Employees of group "A" that require 2 levels of approval by Line Manager and Head of Department
     • Employees of group "B" that require only one level of approval by Line Manager
     • Employees of group "C" that require 2 levels of approval by HR Leave Review and Line Manager
   • Workflow Assignment. By default, all employees are assigned to the DEFAULT workflow. In case you have more than one Leave Approval Workflow, you may assign the leave workflows to the employees via Employee ❯ Employment Terms.
     If an employee is assigned to an Inactive/ Disabled Leave Approval Workflow, then his/ her leave applications will NOT show up in the Leave Planner/ Schedule/ Review for review.
   • Approver Roles. 3 system roles are available for the assignment of Approvers, namely Line Manager, Head of Department and Head of Branch. A Custom Role role could be set up for specific person that holds a different role than the 3 system roles mentioned, such as Boss, HR for Leave Review, COO etc. The 3 system roles usually vary among employees (as employees may have different Line Manager or Head of Department), but the Custom Roles will always remain the same for all employees (such as CEO or Boss).
     Line Manager is assigned via Employee ❯ Placement
     Head of Department is assigned via Employer ❯ Department
     Head of Branch is assigned via Employer ❯ Branch
     Custom Role is assigned via Employee ❯ Custom Role
   • Repeated Approver Assignment. You may repeat the approver assignments at different levels, say 1st Approver being Line Manager, 2nd Approver being Head of Department and 3rd Approver being Line Manager again. This kind of set up will require the employee Line Manager to approve the leave application at 1st and 3rd stage of the leave application workflow respectively.
   • Reduce Workflow Levels. Reducing Leave Approval Workflow levels while there are some leaves which have completed initial approvals but still pending final approvals, will reset these leaves back to first approval level. For instance, changing from 3 levels of approval to 1 level will reset the approval level of leaves that have completed the 1st and 2nd levels.
   • Notify Additional Recipients. If there are someone who are not directly involved in the leave approval workflow, but needs to stay in the loop about the leave applications of employees, they could be set up to receive notifications for selected events in the entire review process.
     Only employees with active Employee Web Accounts could be set up as Additional Recipients
   • Troubleshooting Workflow Problems. When you are setting up Leave Approval Workflow, you may accidentally overlook some of the important steps, such as:
     • Forget to assign an employee to the role of Line Manager, Head of Department or Head of Branch of the applicant.
       Line Manager is assigned via Employee ❯ Placement
       Head of Department is assigned via Employer ❯ Department
       Head of Branch is assigned via Employer ❯ Branch
     • Forget to assign a Department or Branch to the applicant.
       Department of an employee is assigned via Employee ❯ Placement
       Branch of an employee is assigned via Employee ❯ Placement
     • Forget to assign the correct Leave Workflow to the employee.
       An employee's Leave Workflow is assigned via Employee ❯ Employment Terms
     • Reviewers have not yet signed up for their Employee Web Accounts.
     • Employee assigned to Custom Role role has been deleted.
     If there is any error in the workflow for the applicant, then HR.my Administrator will receive a notification whenever this applicant applies for leaves, with detailed instructions on how to remedy the situation.
   • Email Notification not Received. In case you have verified your leave workflow setup properly and are sure that it should work, yet the reviewers or the applicants are not receiving email notifications for leave applications, then you should check:
     • Is HR.my Administrator receiving any email? Regardless of whether you set up the workflow correctly, HR.my Administrator MUST ALWAYS receive email notifications for each leave application. If the workflow is NOT set up correctly, the email will carry detailed instructions on how to fix the problem. If the workflow is set up correctly, then it will carry information about the leave application and reviewer information.
     • If HR.my Administrator/ reviewer/ applicant does not receive any email notifications, then this is EXTREMELY LIKELY due to email server's spam/ junk mail filter. Some email servers may even bounce the email notifications without letting them to land in the junk mail folder. In either case, the ONLY SOLUTION is to ask your Email Administrator to whitelist emails from HR.my.
3. Reviewing Leave Application with Employee Roles
   • Employee Roles. When you sign in your Employee Web Account to review any leave applications, you are reviewing with an Employee Role. Employee Roles include system roles such as Line Manager, Head of Department and Head of Branch as well as Custom Roles.
   • As a leave approving officer, if you reject a leave application, the leave application will be concluded as Rejected immediately, regardless of whether there are further stages in the entire workflow. However, if you approve current leave application, whether the leave application is concluded as Approved depends on how the workflow is set up:
     • If there is no further workflow stage after current stage, then current leave application will be concluded as Approved.
     • If there are additional workflow stage(s) after current approval, then current leave application is not concluded yet but it will be routed to the next approval level.
     • A leave application is concluded as Approved only if it goes through the entire workflow without being rejected at any stage.
     • Just like approving/ rejecting leave applications using HR Roles, as a leave approving officer, you may leave a Leave Approval Remark to explain why a leave is approved/ rejected.
   • When a leave application appears in the Leave Planner/ Leave Schedule / Leave Review, the factors that determine if current leave application is removed from your view after you process it (by approving or rejecting it) are:
     1. Your Approver role and how the role is set up in Leave Approval Workflow
     2. Current workflow stage of the leave application
     Let's say you are both the Line Manager of an employee and the Head of Department for the same employee. If the Leave Approval Workflow is set up so that 1st Approver is the Line Manager and 2nd Approver is the Head of Department, then you will need to approve the leave application 2 times (or reject it once) before it is removed from the Leave Planner/ Leave Schedule / Leave Review.
4. Administering Leave Application with HR Roles
   • HR Roles. When you are managing via Employer account as HR.my Administrator, HR.my Manager or any HR Role, you are approving/ rejecting leave applications with an HR Role.
   • Leave approvals by HR Roles will be logged as part of the workflow history too. Changing the leave application status will cause the pertinent change to be logged, including Escalating the leave application to the next workflow stage.
   • Besides approving/ rejecting leave applications, all HR Roles are empowered to Escalate, Cancel or Reset a leave application workflow. An HR Role is able to Escalate a pending leave application from current workflow stage to the next. Escalation happens for various possible use cases, such as leave approving officer is not available, unassigned, or takes too long to decide etc.
   • Approved leave applications may also be Cancelled by HR Roles if the applicants would like to withdraw their leave applications.
   • In addition, if for whatever reason you would like the leave application to go back to the beginning stage of leave approval workflow, you may Reset it to Pending Approval.
   • Resetting leave status will also reset it's associated workflow stage back to the beginning stage. Resetting could be caused either by changing the leave approval status (from Approved or Rejected to Pending Approval), or by reducing current Leave Approval Workflow levels (which only affects leaves that are pending for final approval, but have already completed some initial workflow stages).