Absence approval doesn't have to sit with just one person. Oak lets you share responsibility for approving absences across your organisation.
Once the Absence application is enabled and the first absence permissions are set, Absence Role Managers can choose who will be the Delegates, Reviewers, Managers and Administrators for each area of your organisation.
This guide will walk you through assigning absence approval roles and explains how those roles pass down through your structure.
This guide covers:
- Assigning absence approval roles
- How absence roles pass down your structure
- Considerations, tips & guidance
Before you start:
- The Absence application must be enabled, and the first level of absence permissions must be set at the main business level.
- You need the Absence Role Manager permission.
- Absence permissions work differently from other permissions: roles set at company level pass down to every area below it.
Assigning absence approval roles
Depending on the size of your organisation, you may have one Role Manager or several, each looking after their own areas.
- Go to the Actions button > Configure, then under Absences select Roles & Responsibilities.
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To choose the area you're setting roles for, select Change, choose the area in the object picker and select Confirm.
To set roles at company level, you need to be the Role Manager for the main company homepage. - Assigning Delegates, Reviewers, Managers and Administrators works the same way, and each role has a description explaining what it does. Select the pencil icon next to the role to open the object picker.
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Choose the people or user groups and select Confirm.
The object picker includes a Related People category, which is useful for assigning approvers, for example someone's line manager.
How absence roles pass down your structure
Here's an example of how roles pass down from one level to the next:
- Company level: the approval roles are set using the two Related People groups and a user group called Absence Administrators.
- Office level (Newcastle): the company-level roles show here but can't be changed from this level, so there's no X next to them. You can still add more people: here, the Department Managers system group has been added to the Managers role. It can be removed with the X.
- Department level (Newcastle Human Resources): this department inherits the roles set at both company and office level.
- The last section on the page shows which areas the roles have been inherited from. Select those buttons to jump to the permissions set in each area.
Considerations, tips & guidance
- Set broad roles high up: roles set at company level apply everywhere, so set company-wide approvers there and add local approvers at office or department level.
- Use user groups: assigning roles to groups rather than individuals makes changes easier when people move roles.