As we near year-end, there are several year-end Workday activities that our clients go through that revolve around extending integration schedules, creating pay periods, and ensuring that Workday is ready for the following year. In addition to these activities, we recommend conducting an Absence / Time Off Plan health check to ensure the plans and balances are correct, align with employee expectations, and comply with regulatory bodies. The following tasks form the basis of the health check:

• Verify unused time off balances.
• Verify that employee time off balances are correct.
• Verify that employee leave statuses are correct.

Unused Time Off Balances

Looking at each employee’s year-end vacation balances will reveal any outliers or out-of-the-ordinary balances (Hint: Use the Extract Time Off Balances report to view these balances). We’ll want to find any out-of-the-ordinary balances as that can indicate more significant underlying issues that should be addressed sooner rather than later. For example, workers may not have taken any time off, and their full vacation balance will stand out. Having such a sizeable unused balance can indicate issues such as:

• Is this a cultural issue? At many investment firms, front-office employees may not be able to utilize their days, and this may be the accepted norm that requires a more extensive discussion to resolve.
• Is this a process issue? At these same firms, front office / senior management is not inclined to go into Workday to do data input. The discussion would then shift to setting up delegates to enter time off on behalf of select employees or reinforcing the correct time off process with those employees. (Hint: Use the All Worker Time Off report to view all time off requests submitted to see if they are being inputted and approved on a timely basis).

Correct Time Off Balances

Time Off balances are affected by numerous factors such as accrual rates, carryover amount, carryover caps, balance caps, employee tenure, position, office location, manual overrides, etc. The sheer number of dependencies can cause incorrect balances, and it will be essential to catch these scenarios early before the employee notices any discrepancies, uses days they don’t have, or vacation payouts are done on incorrect balances. To identify these situations, verify employee time off balances using future effective dates that are 1-2 years in the future. As the balances span years, any expiration or cap issues will become apparent.

Consider an incorrect carryover cap in Workday for a terminating employee in California. This cap is meant to dictate the maximum number of hours an employee can carry over, and without it, the carryover accumulates to an unexpectedly high amount. This will become an issue if that employee is terminated, as California requires that any unused vacation be paid out.

Confirm Employee Leave Status

Incorporating checks on leaves of absence is highly recommended, as leave status and dates can affect functionality in Workday and possibly have payroll implications. Regardless of whether Leaves are maintained manually or by a third-party leave administrator, leave status needs to be reviewed. Manual updates often get skipped, and leave administration by third parties is not always correct.

Consider the example where an employee was on primary caregiver leave and has returned to work. However, their leave status in Workday was not updated, so their delegation settings were not updated when they returned. This would result in the business process approval not being sent to the correct employee. Furthermore, depending on how the employee is paid while on leave, they can be paid under an incorrect rate if the wrong employee status is sent to the Payroll provider. (Hint: Use the Leave Results for Organization report to get a holistic view of all employees on Leave and their Leave dates).

Conclusion 

By making absence a routine focus, you can proactively catch any issues before they happen and become more significant. Once the problem occurs, it becomes more complicated to fix from a Workday configuration perspective and manage employee expectations. For example, an incorrect vacation payout will be much easier to fix before it is paid out. Verifying the health of your Absence setup is good practice and will avoid employee frustrations that happen when pay is affected.