Leave overview
Leave automates, streamlines, and standardizes the administration and enforcement of all leave policies, the incorrect enforcement of which can put your organization at risk for costly fines and potential lawsuits. The functionality exposed by Leave resources allows you to enforce leave rules consistently and fairly, and to maintain accurate and up-to-date records.
Introduction
Leave interacts with data from Timekeeping and Scheduling as part of its ability to administer and enforce leave policies. To understand how Leave works, consider the following example scenario.
The Leave system is typically used to administer and enforce medical leave policies, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in the United States. This Federal law defines lengths of time an employee can be away from her job as part of a leave of absence, but does not define how that employee will be paid during her leave. As a result, Leave is often configured to pay an employee according to an order of accrued benefits that are already stored and tracked as part of the suite ecosystem.
For example, an employee may take a leave of absence for 10 weeks. In order to be paid for this time away from work, she may wish to use up all of her accrued vacation time and then all of her allotted sick time to pay for her leave of absence. If the leave situation qualifies for short-term disability, her pay can then transfer over to short-term disability after her accrued benefits are drained.
Leave Cases
Leave Cases are part of the core functionality of Leave. Each Leave Case belongs to and is associated with an employee. Leave Cases are containers that capture data about a particular leave case, such as notes and notifications, and facilitate the administration of each leave case.
Lifecycle of a Leave Case
The lifecycle of a Leave Case is defined by the three phases of Case status: Submitted, Opened, and Closed.
| Case status | Description |
|---|---|
| Submitted | Initial state |
| Opened | Active state |
| Closed | Archived state |
A Leave Case must begin life with its required case details already included. For example, when you invoke a Leave API operation to create a Leave Case, all required details must be included in the API request.
Once a Leave Case is created, the case automatically enters the Submitted state. A case remains in the Submitted state until at least one Leave Rule is assigned, at which point it becomes Opened.
Once Opened, a Leave Case enters its maintenance phase. Maintenance typically involves charging time against the case and may occassionally involve updating attributes of the case.
During this active phase of a Leave Case's lifecycle, you can define a set of statuses that are included as options in the Case approval status list. This list consists of a set of definable labels that are created and selected to communicate status particular to the needs of your organization.
Note: Case approval status labels have no direct functionality and do not interact with any other part of the Leave system.
Leave Cases can be Closed once an employee's leave of absence has ended, but they are never destroyed as the historical information they contain is vitally important for regulatory compliance purposes.
Leave Case vs Leave Case Transactions
It is important to understand the distinction between a Leave Case, which is a container along with all its information, and the transactions that go along with that Leave Case, such as the specific days an employee is paid as a result of the terms of the case.
The Leave Case is a container that exists while it is relevant and remains because its history is important, but is itself not processed the way its transactions are.
Eligibility and Rules
Leave includes a configurable set of eligibility rules that fall into two categories:
-
Rules that examine an employee's work history during a trailing period based on the start date of the Leave Case and ensure the employee has worked enough to qualify for the selected Leave Type. Eligibility is driven by Leave Types.
-
A set of configurable, mandatory Yes/No questions that are worded such that Yes is passing and No is failing. These questions determine the benefits an employee can use for a given Leave Case.
Note: "Sick time" and "Leave time" are considered benefits in the context of Leave. During normal employment (as opposed to a leave of absence), an employee draws time from these balances directly by, for example, taking a few sick days. When an employee is on leave, that employee still wants to be paid. Your company policy may specify that the employee must first use vacation and then sick time. In this way, these benefits are used indirectly as a way to provide pay during a leave of absence.
Leave also includes rules that govern how time is tracked against an employee's Leave Case.
Rules are divided into two branches, or trees. PAID, the first tree, defines how an employee is paid. TRACKING, the second tree, defines how leave time is tracked against its Leave Type.
Leave Types
A Leave Type defines the legislated benefits an employee draws for a given Leave Case. For example, FMLA, Military, and Education are Leave Types.
When a Leave Rule is created, it includes a set of Leave Types as hierarchical nodes. In most cases, Leave Types have eligibility requirements configured that result in the following behavior:
| Leave Type Eligibility | Result |
|---|---|
| Passing | Leave Type is used |
| Failing | Leave Type is skipped |
| Bypassed | Leave Type is ignored |
Documents
Documents are associated with Leave Types and, along with Attendance, leverage the document framework.
The particular documents available within a Leave Case is based on on the Leave Types used in that case. Documents combine templates with the details entered into a Leave Case and can be generated as many times as necessary from within a Leave Case.
A Doctor's Note is a typical example of a Leave Case document.
Note: Regenerated documents do not replace older versions, they create a new, dated copy that contains a fresh set of the case's attributes. Each organization customizes these document templates to suit their needs.
Leave Edits and Takings
Leave Edits are the mechanism by which Leave administers an employee's time during a leave of absence. Leave Edits are generated by Leave and are sent to Timekeeping as an input to the Totalizer, just like Punches or Pay Code Edits. The Totalizer processes Leave Edits into Takings.
When Leave generates Leave Edits against a particular Leave Case, the rules for that case are used to process the edit. These rules are processed down the two parallel cascading branches described in the Eligibility and Rules section and determine how an employee is paid and what portion of their remaining leave time is deducted.
Note: Leave Edits are not a span, like a Punch In and a Punch Out. They are always a lump sum of time.
Updated over 1 year ago