FSS

Absence Management

What is Absence Management?

Absence Management is an application within PeopleSoft used to request, award and track paid time off at Harvard University while allowing employees and managers to see their paid time-off balances in PeopleSoft. Managers use Absence Management to review and approve time-off requests from staff, review paid time-off banks, and run various online reports. Absence Management tracks various kinds of paid time off, including:

  • Vacation
  • Sick Days
  • Personal Days
  • Longer-Service Bonus Days
  • Bereavement
  • Jury Duty
  • Release Time
  • Excused Absences
  • Training/Conferences

The following types of employees use Absence Management to request and record time-off:

  • Administrative and professional staff - both exempt and overtime-eligible
  • Clerical and technical staff - both HUCTW and non-represented staff

The following types of employees do NOT use Absence Management to request and record time-off:

  • Extended part-time employees (EPEs)
  • Postdocs
  • Service/trades employees
  • Less-than-half-time employees (LHTs)
  • Interns

Absence Management automatically awards time when it is earned and enforces all paid time off maximums.

Features of Absence Management

For Employees:

  • Provides ability to view current, accurate time-off balances on demand via the web
  • Provides a timely, quick and easy way of reporting absences
  • Provides a more clearly defined and timely process for receiving time off approval

For Managers:

  • Provides a way to easily review time-off requests, track staff time-off balances and see a consolidated overview of planned absences for a work group
  • Helps to more easily review and grant paid time off requests
  • Eliminates duplicate data entry or the need to maintain other paid time off tracking methods

For the University:

  • Improves its record-keeping and financial accounting for paid time off while ensuring that benefits are equitable across all units
  • Makes its record-keeping practices more rigorous and consistent, enabling it to recover several million more dollars annually from it's research sponsors
 

User Information

How to Obtain Access to Absence Management

While all Harvard employees are given access to PeopleSoft Self Service, access to other roles in Absence Management requires approval from your tub's HR Authorized Requestor.

Each Tub has a designated authorized requestor who is responsible for submitting requests for system access. Your manager or supervisor will help you determine the applications and the level of access that you will require for your job. Your authorized requestor will then submit the appropriate request(s) for access. For more information and to obtain the list of Authorized Requestors, see the Client Services section.

There are four main roles in Absence Management:

  • Absence Approvers can access Absence Management pages in PeopleSoft's Manager Self Service to approve, deny or cancel an employee's absence requests but cannot request time off on behalf of an employee.
  • Absence Keepers can request time off on behalf of designated employees through PeopleSoft's Manager Self Service pages but do not have access to approve or deny employee's absence requests.
  • Absence Adjusters combine the actions of both Absence Approvers and Keepers in PeopleSoft's Manager Self Service pages. They can request time off on behalf of employees for prior time periods.
  • Absence Administrators have all of the access of Absence Adjusters, as well as being able to make adjustments to paid time-off balances, void or delete absence requests and assign special paid time off awards to staff.

For more information concerning these roles, see the job aids section of Eureka.

Training

Training for absence management is availabe in online and classroom-led instruction. To access the online courses, log into the Eureka site. To register for classroom-led instruction, please see the list of Absence Management courses available at the HARVIE site.

Documentation

A set of job aids and other documentation for Absence Management is available at the Eureka site.

Support

Contact the UIS Help Desk (6-2001) or via for assistance with Absence Management. Your request will be managed by the appropriate member of the FSS Peoplesoft team.

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