Best practices for tracking WFH days
In today's increasingly flexible work environments, tracking home office days is crucial for maintaining clear communication and ensuring workflow efficiency. absentify provides an intuitive solution for employers and employees alike to manage remote work seamlessly.
This guide will cover the best way to utilize absentify to track home office days effectively.
Before tracking can begin, it's important to define what qualifies as a home office day within your organization. Establish clear guidelines and policies that specify eligibility, frequency, and any department-specific rules. This foundational step ensures that everyone is on the same page.
absentify’s Overview page allows both managers and employees to view and manage home office days easily. Employees can mark their planned home office days, while managers can review and approve these entries. This transparency helps in planning and maintaining balance within teams.
Let's jump into this versatile feature! Start by creating a new leave type for working remotely or working from home (WFH).
Navigate to Settings > Leave types > Add a new leave type.
Fill out the basic leave type information, or read our support article on Creating and editing leave types for more information.
Remember: Choose the appropriate level of Outlook calendar sync for the leave type, then select "Working elsewhere" from the dropdown menu. This prevents the staff's Outlook status from showing as "Out of office" to their colleagues.
Now scroll down to the various settings and edit these accordingly. Depending on your company's policies and regulations, decide how you would like to set these up.
To get you started, here are some tips and tricks to curate these settings to your company's policies:
Activated: Provided that your company allows its staff an unlimited number of WFH days, keep this switch deactivated.
Deactivated: If your company limits the amount of home office days permitted, add this as a separate allowance first and flip this toggle to On. Click here for more in on adding allowances.
Activated: If user's need approval from their manager/approver when requesting WFH, activate this toggle.
Deactivated: If staff are allowed to take WFH whenever they wish, keep this deactivated. This will bypass the approval process and automatically add the WFH to the user's calendar.
Activated: Activating this toggle will require user's to fill out the Reason section when requesting WFH.
Deactivated: Deactivating this toggle will make filling out the Reason section optional. We recommend keeping it deactivated, to encourage your employees to manage their own home office schedules within absentify. This autonomy can lead to increased job satisfaction and better adherence to remote work policies!
Activated: Activate this toggle only in the event that user's who request WFH are technically away from work according to your company's policies.
Deactivated: We recommend keeping this setting deactivated, since your staff is technically not away from the office such as with other leave types.
Activated: Activate this feature if you don't want colleagues to know when another employee is WFH.
Deactivated: We recommend keeping this feature deactivated, so other users know if a colleague is WFH and can plan remote meetings accordingly.
Once your satisfied with the settings, click Save to add WFH to your organization's list of leave types. But not to worry, you can come back and edit this at any time!
Now that your staff can track not only their absences, but also when they plan to work remotely, ensure that all team members are well-versed in how to use absentify for tracking home office days. Providing ongoing support and training helps in maximizing the tool’s effectiveness and ensures smooth operation.
By incorporating these best practices into your absentify usage, you can ensure that your team remains productive and engaged, no matter where they are working from!
Creating and editing leave types
Create and share Outlook calendars
Recording sick leave
This guide will cover the best way to utilize absentify to track home office days effectively.
Getting started
Define Home Office policies
Before tracking can begin, it's important to define what qualifies as a home office day within your organization. Establish clear guidelines and policies that specify eligibility, frequency, and any department-specific rules. This foundational step ensures that everyone is on the same page.
Use the Overview-page
absentify’s Overview page allows both managers and employees to view and manage home office days easily. Employees can mark their planned home office days, while managers can review and approve these entries. This transparency helps in planning and maintaining balance within teams.
Create a custom leave type
Let's jump into this versatile feature! Start by creating a new leave type for working remotely or working from home (WFH).
Navigate to Settings > Leave types > Add a new leave type.
Fill out the basic leave type information, or read our support article on Creating and editing leave types for more information.
Remember: Choose the appropriate level of Outlook calendar sync for the leave type, then select "Working elsewhere" from the dropdown menu. This prevents the staff's Outlook status from showing as "Out of office" to their colleagues.
Now scroll down to the various settings and edit these accordingly. Depending on your company's policies and regulations, decide how you would like to set these up.
To get you started, here are some tips and tricks to curate these settings to your company's policies:
Deduct from allowance:
Activated: Provided that your company allows its staff an unlimited number of WFH days, keep this switch deactivated.
Deactivated: If your company limits the amount of home office days permitted, add this as a separate allowance first and flip this toggle to On. Click here for more in on adding allowances.
Requires approval:
Activated: If user's need approval from their manager/approver when requesting WFH, activate this toggle.
Deactivated: If staff are allowed to take WFH whenever they wish, keep this deactivated. This will bypass the approval process and automatically add the WFH to the user's calendar.
Reason mandatory
Activated: Activating this toggle will require user's to fill out the Reason section when requesting WFH.
Deactivated: Deactivating this toggle will make filling out the Reason section optional. We recommend keeping it deactivated, to encourage your employees to manage their own home office schedules within absentify. This autonomy can lead to increased job satisfaction and better adherence to remote work policies!
Include in maximum absent
Activated: Activate this toggle only in the event that user's who request WFH are technically away from work according to your company's policies.
Deactivated: We recommend keeping this setting deactivated, since your staff is technically not away from the office such as with other leave types.
Privacy
Activated: Activate this feature if you don't want colleagues to know when another employee is WFH.
Deactivated: We recommend keeping this feature deactivated, so other users know if a colleague is WFH and can plan remote meetings accordingly.
Once your satisfied with the settings, click Save to add WFH to your organization's list of leave types. But not to worry, you can come back and edit this at any time!
Provide Training and Support
Now that your staff can track not only their absences, but also when they plan to work remotely, ensure that all team members are well-versed in how to use absentify for tracking home office days. Providing ongoing support and training helps in maximizing the tool’s effectiveness and ensures smooth operation.
By incorporating these best practices into your absentify usage, you can ensure that your team remains productive and engaged, no matter where they are working from!
Related:
Creating and editing leave types
Create and share Outlook calendars
Recording sick leave
Updated on: 05/06/2024
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