New employee management: clockodo makes it easier to manage scheduled work hours, holidays, sick days and overtime
clockodo now offers many new features for employee management and analyzing working hours. The bottom line: clockodo creates detailed employee reports that factor in scheduled working hours as well as nonbusiness days, holidays, special leave and sick days in addition to time-off compensation for overtime hours.
Staff can also submit holiday requests, which you can manage as the account owner.
What all is new?
Overview of working hours with time account
In addition to the overview of the key figures for all staff, a detailed time account provides a calendar view of all relevant details for working hours of individual employees. How many scheduled and actual hours has the employee worked? When is the employee on vacation? How many overtime hours have they accrued? The supervisor has an overview of all employee time accounts and can view the details of each employee in a calendar format. The calendar view also offers employees a benefit: they are always able to keep track of their positive/negative time balance, which is particularly helpful for flexitime models.
Nonbusiness days, holidays and sick days
The new updates now make it possible to submit holiday requests directly in clockodo. The manager receives the requests by e-mail and can accept or reject them from the dashboard in the time tracking software. Even complex situations such as an employee’s illness during their vacation can be added to the time management system with just a few clicks. The tool lets you determine: Do I have adequate company resources during this time to grant vacation hours? How many days of annual vacation has an employee already used? clockodo offers the perfect way to manage staff absences.
Overtime management
Accrued overtime hours are carried over to the next month and can be compensated for using time off by submitting a request to the manager. Payouts for overtime as well as carryovers to the next year can be recorded and factored into the analyses.
The automatic compensation for overtime hours, for example, allows the first ten hours of overtime each month to be excluded from overtime hours. In this case, an co-worker’s eleventh hour of overtime would then begin counting towards the overtime quota. Certain collective agreements and individual work contracts provide for this and can be managed accordingly in clockodo.
User-friendly interface & calendar views
What good is the best information if it's impossible to manage? This valid question is the reason why we closely examine each of our new developments and have strongly focused on details in this update as well.
For example, different colors in the co-worker reports make it easy to identify when the employee is on vacation, when they were sick, and when they compensated for overtime by taking time off. Another example is the new selection feature in the headings: if you hover the mouse pointer over the co-worker names, you can switch back and forth between co-workers via the check box.
As a manager, what do I need to do to set up the software?
Basic company settings for the employee module
As a supervisor, you can begin by configuring your company settings. These include regional holidays and your employees’ individual scheduled hours. After logging in, click the gear symbol at the top right to open the “Company” settings. There you will see the item “Settings for working hours administration”, which allows you to enter nonbusiness days, planned working hours, overtime compensation and the number of annual vacation days. By entering the scheduled working hours, you define the regular working hours as hours per day. The overtime hours for your staff are calculated automatically.
These are the default settings for your company. These values can be changed in the settings for each individual user.
Define nonbusiness days
Nonbusiness days are grouped in clockodo to accommodate the various arrangements in the different regions. You select a default nonbusiness group for your company, but can configure different nonbusiness groups for each individual employee. This feature is especially useful for companies with multiple locations in different regions.
Under “Edit nonbusiness days” you can create a new nonbusiness group or choose from several predefined calendars. Click the gear symbol for “Company” at the top right. You will then see the nonbusiness settings on the company settings page that appears. “Default nonbusiness days” appears under “Settings for working time administration”.
Other settings for selected users
In addition to assigning your staff the company-wide group of nonbusiness days or standard scheduled hours, you can also configure these settings for each individual co-worker. For example, you can categorize a particular employee as part-time for six months, i.e. four scheduled hours per day, while your company’s other employees are assigned eight scheduled hours. Variations can be entered for vacation days as well.
As a manager, how do I then handle the various functions?
Holidays and absences
If an employee submits a holiday request in clockodo, the supervisor can manage, approve or reject the request. “Pending absence requests” appear directly in the dashboard. Or at the top right, go to the co-worker settings (left of the gear symbol) and select “Co-workers”. Clicking the gear symbol next to the users lets you manage the absences of the particular co-worker. In addition to regular vacation, you can enter additional vacation days, sick days and time-off compensation for overtime hours.
Overtime
Accrued overtime hours are automatically carried over to the next month. In addition to viewing the raw data, as a supervisor you can also manage this data. For example, you can reduce an employee’s overtime balance if they have been paid out or if the employee wants to compensate them with time off. In the co-worker settings (left of the gear symbol at the top right, subitem “Co-workers”), click the gear symbol next to the appropriate employee. Select “Edit absences” there. Under “Add absence”, then select “Reduction of overtime”.
Employee reports
In the “Reports” menu, there is a dropdown that lets you select between the “Report generator”, “Project reports” and “Co-worker reports”. The co-worker reports provide information about the time account and allotted number of vacation days per year for your employees. You can also quickly and easily see how many sick days and how many holidays or special leave days an co-worker has taken this year.
Click on an co-worker to open their yearly overview. We’ve also made this report more user-friendly: drop-down menus at the top let you switch between different co-workers or between different employee settings.
I’m an employee. What’s new for me?
The greatest benefit the new update offers co-workers is the overview of their own time account.
How many overtime hours do I have? How many hours do I have until I have fulfilled my allotted number of working hours? How many vacation days have I already taken, and how many do I have left? Employees can easily find answers to these and many other questions.
My co-worker report
The drop-down at the top lets you open your co-worker report. Here you will see an overview of your entire year. The number of hours you worked on each specific day is shown here, sorted by month and calendar week.
You also see your nonbusiness days, holidays and sick days. To show your scheduled vs. actual number of hours worked in addition to the difference between these two figures, enable the option “Display the exact work times as well” in the calendar.
My absences
As an employee, it is easy to view and manage your absences. Click the "My Absences” gear symbol at the top right if you are an employee and would like to submit the following absences to your manager: “Regular holiday from the quota”, “Special leave”, “Reduction of overtime”, “Sick day”.
This direct communication between staff and supervisors facilitates close cooperation. clockodo also makes it quick and easy to submit your absence requests, and the clear calendar view shows all of your absences at a glance.
Other features are still in the works as well!
The employee module is already very extensive. Still, there are features that we have already identified as important and will add in the near future:
- Calendar view of absences for all co-workers:
The absences for each individual co-worker are already shown in a very clear calendar format. But as a manager, for accurate vacation planning you need to see all absences at a glance. We will add this view option soon. (Planned completion: 1st quarter 2016)
UPDATE 04 March 2016: The absence calendar is available now - Breaks:
In many cases, you want to monitor both working hours as well as breaks. The current range of features does not effectively provide for this yet. We are planning to update clockodo to offer this feature. (Planned completion: 3rd quarter 2016)
