Q&As: Preparing for 2023 in Natural HR

The article here will explain how sickness can be linked. Meaning that although one record was closed on 31st December and a new one opened on 1st January, it can be treated as one instance. In terms of the return to work forms it will unfortunately create two, however, if you are using a custom return to work workflow these can be manually removed.

In short, yes. If you have instances of Maternity leave that span the two holiday years, we recommend closing the maternity leave on the last day of this year and starting a new instance at the start of the next holiday year. These instances can then be “linked” for the purposes of Bradford Factor, if needed, following the instructions in this article.

Yes, we advise you start the carry over process before the new year. You can run the ‘Calculate and Check’ as many times as you like before 2023, and then submit on the first working day of the year.

A rule can be set up to dictate the maximum number of days that can be carried over for the majority of people and then amended through Administration > HR > Time off management > Manage Carryover Values. This includes updating the limit for those who work part-time, or a set number of days each week for example.

Carryover as a time off type is a time sensitive value and this means it can have an expiry date put against it. After this date has passed carryover no longer shows to be booked.

Yes, provided that the lieu time off type can be carried over.

You would get negative values if you allowed employees to take more holiday than their allowance. This is a setting in the Time off Settings (global) page.

It is possible to carry forward a negative value with carryover however this is only really a suitable option for companies with carryover which does not expire in the holiday year when combined with a summary type time off. This is because otherwise once the carryover expires the deduction will be removed.

If an employee has used days from their 2023 holiday allowance in 2022, and you want to carry over a negative amount, you would find it easier to set up either a manual adjustment time off type or to make an adjustment to the employee’s allowance for next year.

These can either be carried out via the bulk upload or if you are looking at a small number (I.e., under 10) you could manually add these values via Administration > HR > Time off management > Manage Carryover Values.

There is only the space for one carryover ‘rule’ per site or globally however you can make any amendments via Administration > HR > Time off management > Manage Carryover Values or if your rules are more complex you might like to consider using calculate and check to export these values and then use bulk update.

If there is a cohort of employees that is a “majority” you should set that figure in the settings, process carryover automatically, and then manually manage the values for the exceptions. The rule in Time off Settings is only applied in the automated process and can be overridden by manually managing the carryover values.

Yes – each of the bulk upload options will include a link to a template to populate as well as a link to a guide for reference.

It can be done in either direction however setting the new holiday year will reset everyone’s current balances which can make cross references difficult. By processing carryover first you’ll still have the historic values to refer to.

The start date for the new holiday year is set in Time off Settings (global). If you have Sites with different holiday dates, then it can also be set for individual sites under Admin > HR > Data Management > Sites.  This is usually the last step in the process and happens at the start of the new holiday year.

Yes, if you map the bank holidays first, they can then, against actions, be edited and switched from Mandatory to shutdown types.

Yes, we offer bank holidays from all countries across the UK. If you find any missing, please reach out to support with a link to a recognised government list and we can look at adding them.

Mandatory days and shutdown days can be set to apply to only certain sites or departments. Provided these employees can all be categorised by one of these options you can separate out those in different areas to prevent days deducting from the wrong employees.

Shutdown and mandatory days can only be added via Time and Attendance > Holidays and not via bulk upload.

Yes, and both recognise working patterns from which to deduct from too.

There should be no difference, they should both cause the duration to be reduced appropriately.

Mandatory days and Shutdown days both respect the duration of the day specified in Working Patterns. So, if you have Working Patterns in place for your employees you could specify the duration of the day as 0.5 (for daily metered employees) or e.g., 4 (for hourly metered employees) and this would be taken into account. If you do not use working patterns then you may need to handle the half-day mandatory day in a different way, perhaps by bulk uploading a time off record for that day for each person.

This depends on how your system is set up – check your main holiday time off type. If it is set to “Default deducting type” this is the type that will be used for mandatory days. If it is set to “Shutdown type” this is the type that will be used for Shutdown type.

You can either add this as an additional bookable time off type or alternatively you could use bulk upload to update people’s allowances with an extra day for 2023.

Working patterns are meant to be used for people who either work outside normal hours or who might work a varying week pattern that can’t be added using the normal methods.

Mandatory days will get applied to an employee’s account based on their working pattern so if they don’t work on a given bank holiday then the day is not deducted for them.

It is possible to set up Rota’s in Natural HR. There are knowledgebase articles available which describe the Rota function here.

Yes – This is something which is set up per employee with no global option and can be found within People > Employees > Benefits where there is a section to choose if an employee’s time off meter is set up in days or hours. If you change this, you will also need to update peoples allowances accordingly.

If they are still working the same pattern in 2023 then I would suggest adding the new dates at the top off the ‘Working Patterns’ page, however, if they are no longer needed then they could be reset.

This could be because the length of the working day is not set correctly. This can be set globally in Time off settings (global) as “Standard working day in hours” if there is a standard working day length for your company, or could be set in the employee’s working pattern, which would override the standard day length.

Check that the employee’s Time Off meter is set correctly for your company needs. This can be set in “Days” and “Hours” and can be changed in the Benefits section of the employee card.

Yes – Providing your Length of service (LoS) type is set up as a LoS time off type the system will automatically update this for you.