Setup Considerations: Absence Occurrences
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of the Absence Occurrences functionality. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
Absence occurrences enable you to monitor the:
- Number of times and consecutive days workers are absent during a period.
- Types of absences they take.
- Standard: Include only 1 absence type.
- Custom: Include multiple types.
Business Benefits
Absence occurrences:
- Increase efficiency in your absence reporting as you can view information for all absence types in 1 report.
- Reduce the risk of error in your absence reports by removing the need to count individual time off or leave events.
- Make it easier to control absenteeism and costs as you can identify trends and use the information to manage your resources.
Use Cases
- Prepare local regulatory reporting documents. Example: Your UK offices have Bradford Factor reporting, measuring how many times an absence occurred in a period.
- Group different types of absences together into 1 occurrence. Example: You can create an absence occurrence for a custom absence type to monitor when workers are absent for a block of consecutive days, including public holidays.
Questions to Consider
When setting up absence occurrences, consider:
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
What absence types do you want to include in your absence occurrence reporting? | You can enable absence occurrences for these absence types:
Workday then includes these types in a standard absence occurrence, which groups consecutive days of the same absence type. You can create a custom absence occurrence to group different absence types in a way that suits your business needs. |
What days do you want to base your absence occurrence on? | Workday creates standard absence occurrences based on the days to include setting in your time off plans or leave of absence types. For absence tables, Workday joins all days to include from all tiers.
You can create custom absence occurrences that define which days to include. This configuration overrides the setting in each of the absence types that you include. |
How far back do you want to report on absence occurrences? | You can report on absence occurrences for any time period if you convert your existing data when configuring absence occurrences. Ensure that you specify a date as far as back as your reporting requirements. |
Recommendations
Workday recommends that you:
- Decide whether you want to enable absence types for absence occurrences after you create them.
- Wait until after major planned data loads in your tenant complete before enabling absence occurrences during implementation. You can create absence occurrences for your existing absence data as of a specific date, for reporting purposes, by running a conversion when you configure absence occurrences. The conversion can take some time. You don't have to run it the first time, but Workday highly recommends you revisit the task and convert your absence data later. Conversion doesn't change the existing absence data.
- Maximize performance by minimizing the as of date, number of workers, and occurrence types when recalculating absence occurrence manually.
Requirements
No impact.
Limitations
Workday automatically recalculates absence occurrences based on certain changes (see Connections and Touchpoints). However, there's a slight delay as the job that detects and recalculates only runs every 4 hours.
When you inactivate a work schedule calendar, Workday doesn't recalculate absence occurrences for workers with direct assignments to the calendar before you inactivated it. You need to recalculate absence occurrences manually for these workers.
Absence occurrences don't support:
- Multiple work schedules per worker.
- Start and end times on time offs. Example: Rachel works Monday to Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. If Rachel has time off all day on Monday and from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM on Tuesday, Workday groups these 2 days into 1 occurrence. However, if Rachel has time off all day on Monday, and time off on Tuesday from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, Workday also groups the time off into 1 occurrence. This time off isn't truly consecutive, based on the start and end times of the time offs and Rachel's work schedule.
When maintaining related absence occurrences, Workday links occurrences on specific dates rather than individual time off entries. If an approved time off entry exists on a day that you link, this day remains linked even if someone adds new entries on the same day. Since the original entry's corresponding occurrence is still approved, Workday maintains the link. If someone corrects the original entry, Workday drops the link because the entry is changed or in progress.
Tenant Setup
Access the
Edit Tenant Setup - HCM
task to enable quantity per occurrence on absence table tiers. See:
Security
Domains | Considerations |
|---|---|
Worker Data: Absence Occurrences
| Provides view access to the View Absence Occurrences Detail report and the Absence Occurrences for Workers data source. |
Worker Data: Absence Occurrences (Manager View)
| Provides managers view access to the View Absence Occurrences Summary report and the Absence Occurrences for Workers data source. |
Worker Data: Related Absence Occurrences domain
| Provide access to the Maintain Related Absence Occurrences task, enabling you to link and unlink absence occurrences and view linked occurrences. |
Set Up: Time Off (General)
Set Up: Leave of Absence | Provides access to configure absence occurrences and view absence occurrence types. |
Business Processes
Business Processes | Considerations |
|---|---|
Correct Time Off
| Recalculates absence occurrences when a worker corrects their time off. Example: When workers correct their requests by setting the time off quantity to zero, as long as the correction is in progress, the time off is part of the occurrence. After approval, Workday removes the time off from any occurrence that it was previously part of. |
Request Leave of Absence
Request Time Off Enter Time | Recalculates absence occurrences when a worker requests a leave of absence or time off. |
Request Return from Leave of Absence
| Recalculates absence occurrences when workers or managers submit a return from a leave of absence. Example: When workers return from leave, Workday updates the absence occurrence end date to the leave actual end date rather than the estimated return date.
Workday considers a worker to be off leave the day after the Estimated Last Day of Leave/Absence . Before a worker is returned, Workday uses the estimated last day of leave as the absence occurrence end date. If the estimated last day of leave is 01/05/2024 and the current date is 05/05/2024, if the worker is still on leave, the earlier estimated date impacts reporting where reports are based on the absence occurrence end date. |
Reporting
You can use the
Absence Occurrences for Workers
report data source when creating custom reports on absence occurrences. You can also use these data source filters:
- Absence Occurrences by Organization and Date Range (Approved Only)
- Absence Occurrences by Organization and Date Range (Approved and In Progress)
Reports | Considerations |
|---|---|
View Absence Occurrences Detail
| Enables absence administrators to view individual occurrences for workers. |
View Absence Occurrence Type
| Enables absence administrators to view the details of your absence occurrence types. |
View Absence Occurrences Summary
| Enables managers to view an overview of the number of times workers are absent per absence type. |
Integrations
Web Service | Considerations |
|---|---|
Get Absence Occurrence Types
| Use this web service to view existing absence occurrences types. We recommend you do this before creating a new absence occurrence type. |
Put Absence Occurrence Types
| Use this web service to enter absence occurrence types, saving time if you want to bulk load absence occurrence types. |
Connections and Touchpoints
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Absence Tables
| You can enable absence tables for absence occurrences. Workday automatically flags absence occurrences of this type for recalculation when you change tier configurations in absence tables. |
Change Work Schedule
| Workday automatically flags absence occurrences for recalculation when either:
|
Change Job
| Workday automatically flags absence occurrences for recalculation when workers change jobs in your organization. |
Holiday and Work Schedule Calendars
| Workday automatically flags absence occurrences for recalculation when there are changes to your holiday and work schedule calendar events.
When you create or edit work schedule calendars and work schedule calendar events (or delete work schedule calendar events), Workday flags absence occurrences for recalculation:
|
Leave of Absence
| You can enable leave of absence types for absence occurrences. Workday automatically flags absence occurrences of this type for recalculation when you change the days to include configuration. |
Purge Plans
| You can select Absence Occurrences as a purgeable data type and save it in a purge plan for subsequent use when purging person data for terminated workers. You can purge time off or leave data for a worker only if you're also purging absence occurrences. |
Time Tracking
| Workday recalculates absence occurrences when a worker requests time off through Time Tracking. |
Time Off
| You can enable time offs for absence occurrences. Workday automatically flags absence occurrences of this type for recalculation if you change the days to include configuration on the time off plan. |
Union Membership
| Workday automatically flags absence occurrences for recalculation when workers change union membership. |