Workforce Support Team | Workforce Support Team |
SOP-DE-WFS Process of Vacation - Workforce One | Number of Reviews: 1 |
Approvers: Luna | Date of Review: 23/07/2024 |
INTRODUCTION
This page will provide you with the most important information needed to handle detailed vacation requests and answer questions from employees.
Guidelines and Policies
This page aims to clarify everything you need to know about the Vacation processing. Some parameters of the vacation days are dependent on when the employee was hired. Based on this, the number of days accrued can vary. Therefore, the first two sections have been divided to accommodate the conditions for the difference in hire date- employees hired before 31 March 2024 and employees hired after 31 March 2024.
Employees hired before 31 March 2024
How many vacation days are the employees entitled to?
Employee will receive 24 holidays per year, no matter their contractual hours, and as long as they have passed probation. The employees accrue 2 days per month during their probation and are entitled to the full 24 days after their probation.
Their 24-holiday balance will then refresh and begin in January of every year and employees can carry a max of 5 vacation days from one year to another. Any remaining days will be lost. The carry-over days are only valid till 31 March 2024 and need to be used before this date.
Tip! The vacation balance can be found in Zendesk
How many vacation days are the employees entitled to in their first year of employment?
Accrual only begins on the date of hire. For example: If an employee joins on the 6th of January, their accrual will not start until the 6th of February.
Within the probation period of employment, the employee accrues 2 days per month.
If the probation period is 2 months: The employee accrues 4 vacation days and then accrues the remaining 20 days at the end of 2 months. Totally, 24 days
If the probation period is 6 months: The employee accrues 12 vacation days and then accrues the remaining 12 days at the end of 6 months. Totally, 24 days.
Employees hired after 31 March 2024
How many vacation days are the employees entitled to?
Employee will receive 20 holidays per year, no matter their contractual hours, and as long as they have passed probation. The employees accrue 1.67 days per month during their probation and are entitled to the full 20 days after their probation.
Their 20-holiday balance will then refresh and begin in January of every year and employees can carry a max of 5 vacation days from one year to another. Any remaining days will be lost. The carry-over days are only valid till 31 March 2024 and need to be used before this date.
Tip! The vacation balance can be found in Zendesk
How many vacation days are the employees entitled to in their first year of employment?
Accrual only begins on the date of hire every month. For example: If an employee joins on the 6th of January, their accrual will not start until the 6th of February.
Within the probation period of employment, the employee accrues 1.67 days per month.
If the probation period is 2 months: The employee accrues 1.67 x 2 = 3.34 vacation days and this is approximated to 3 vacation days and then accrues the remaining 20 days at the end of 2 months. Totally, 20 days
If the probation period is 6 months: The employee accrues 11.67 x 6 = 10.02 vacation days and this approximated to 10 vacation days and then accrues the remaining 12 days at the end of 6 months. Totally, 20 days.
The vacation days approximation:
In case the vacation days accrued as seen above are in between two whole numbers, they can be approximated accordingly to approve vacation days.
For example, if an employee has accrued 3.34(1.67 x 2 days) vacation days, it is less than 0.5th of the value/ vacation day and therefore is approximated to 3 vacation days.
For example, if an employee has accrued 6.68(1.67 x 4 days) vacation days, it is more than 0.5th of the value/ vacation day and is therefore approximated to 7 vacation days.
Employees with disability
All employees with disability are allowed 5 extra vacation days per year.
If the employee was hired before 31 March 2024: 24 + 5 additional days = 29 vacation days in a year
If the employee was hired after 31 March 2024: 20 + 5 additional days = 25 vacation days in a year
General requirements
Sundays and public holidays are not deducted as vacation days.
Starting on 01.04.2023, the maximum number of days that can be deducted from an employee's balance per week is 5, regardless of whether the employee is on an old (6-day working week) or new contract (5-day working week).
How long of a notice period do employees have to request their holidays?
At least 11 days' notice must be given for planning purposes. Accrued holidays should be taken within the same calendar year (before December).
⚠️ If the employee resigns from their employment contract or is terminated by the company, the 11-day advance policy does not apply. They can request vacation days and these days are automatically approved considering their vacation balance and confirmation of contract termination on SAP.
What if an employee wants an unpaid holiday?
Unpaid vacations can be requested once all vacation days have been used and need to be escalated and approved by the Hub manager. We will then process this and get back to the employee with a response. Only a maximum of 20 unpaid vacation days can be approved and only once in an entire calendar year.
What if an employee was unable to use all their vacation days for this year?
In general cases, if an employee cannot use all their vacation days in a calendar year due to sickness, business operations, or other uncontrolled reasons, a maximum of 5 vacation days can be carried over to the new year. The carried-over vacation days should be used before 31 March.
For example, employee A was hired before 31 March 2024 and has 24 vacation days in the year 2023. Due to sickness, business operations, or other uncontrolled reasons, the employee was unable to take all the vacation days in 2023. By the end of 2023, if the employee is still left with 4 vacation days, these vacation days can be carried over to 2024 and the total vacation days balance at the start of 2024 is 24 + 4 carryover days = 28 vacation days. The 4 carried-over days should be used before 31 March 2024. Otherwise, after 31 March 2024, the employee's vacation balance goes back to 24 days.
Remember! Hub Managers will approve a higher carryover for employees who have been sick or could not take their holidays because of an emergency. This must be previously flagged and finally approved by their hub manager and/ or area manager/ cluster lead.
What happens to the employees’ vacation days when they resign/are terminated?
- Inside their probation time (First 6 months)
If the employee resigns or is terminated by the company inside the probationary period they are entitled to take their 2-day-per-month accrual before the end of their contract.
For example, if an employee hired before 31 March 2024 starts on 5th January and ends their contract on 31st May, they will have accrued 8 days to be used before the last working day.
- Outside probation time (after first 6 months)
First half of the year (01.01 - 30.06): If the employee resigns after their probation time and in the first half of the calendar year they are entitled to take the vacation days that they have accrued until their last working day.
Remember! Carry-over days are valid until the 31st of March and must be considered in case of termination within this time frame.
Second half of the year (01.07 - 31.12): If the employee resigns after their probation time and in the second half of the calendar year they are entitled to take the full annual vacation that they have accrued.
- Terminated after probation period: We only handle cases where the employee was terminated without leave of absence. This means the employee needs to work and take unused vacation days until the exit date (if they want to be paid for that period). If we encounter a case that differs and an employee requests a leave of absence, forward the ticket to payroll with a detailed explanation.
Remember! The 11-day notice does not apply to employees who are ending their contract. We can approve their vacation manually.
Vacation request policy
At least 11 days of notice must be given for planning purposes; Requests that do not fall into this period will be rejected.
During the first six months of employment (probation period), the employee accrues 1/12th of their yearly balance(either 1/12th of 20 or 1/12th of 24) every month on the day of their hire.
Accrual occurs after every worked month, so if an employee was hired on 10th February 2023, the accruals would take place on 10th March 2023, 10th April 2023, 10th May 2023, 10th June 2023, and 10th July 2023.
The first accrual of vacation days will occur one month after their hire date. This means that in the first month of employment, employees are not entitled to take vacation days.
After ending the employee probation period, they are entitled to request the full accrued vacation days for that year; Meaning the days accrued from the month they are hired till the end of the year.
Let’s take an example; If the employee is hired on April 14th, 2023. They will end their probation on October 14th(in case of a six-month probation period) and will then have access to their full accrued balance.
The exact hire date of the employee will not be considered once they pass probation. Meaning in this example the employee will have 15 vacation days available on the 14th of October.
April-December = 9 months
9x1.67 = 15.03 days
Employee’s balance for 2023 will be 15 days.
After probation, the employee's start date is irrelevant as the month will be counted as a whole month.
Step-by-Step
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We do not manually process vacation requests. We do not approve vacation unless it is an escalation from the hub manager. We have an automated vacation tool that will take care of most tickets. The vacation tool is integrated into Zendesk and automatically assesses the request based on Flink's vacation policies and guidelines. We do not interfere with the actions of the Vacation tool
Vacation tool
The vacation tool, launched in July 2023, by the central team is an automatic platform that gets vacation requests from Quinyx and matches requests with the rule of 11 days notice policy, employee vacation balance and hub capacity, and takes action on the vacation request (Approve or reject). The tool recollects information and triggers action on a daily basis:
- Performs changes in Quinyx and Correcting Timetracker
- Sends Communication to the Employees via Zendesk.
How does the vacation tool look?
In the image below is a screenshot of how the vacation request looks like in the tool:
1. Employee is asking why their request was denied
If the employee has questions about why their vacation was denied, we have 2 options to check why and give the employee more context;
In Zendesk;
Check the interactions in Zendesk, tickets with the subject “Vacation denied” are from the vacation tool.
When the tool takes an action on a vacation request the tool also automatically creates a ticket in Zendesk informing the employee of the action taken. If denied, the reason will be described in the ticket.
See example below;
When you’ve found the request you want to check, look in the ticket to see the reason why the request was denied;
Denied: 11 days notice - the request was not done more than 11 days before the start of the vacation
Denied: hub capacity - The employee's hub does not have enough capacity at the time of the requested vacation. Every hub has an allowed limit on the number of employees on vacation for a particular week. Once this is exceeded, the vacation tool automatically rejects the vacation request. The
Denied: Vacation balance - The employee does not have enough balance at the time of request.
5. Go back to the ticket and remind the employee why the request was denied and invite them to check the information available on the Flink Workforce Support page. Inform them that if the request is an emergency, they must reach out to their Hub Manager to request an escalation ticket. Also, remind the employee that in case of a possible escalation by their hub manager, the employee should not request vacation days again on Quinyx.
In cases when the employee has already requested a vacation on Quinyx and we also receive an escalation from the hub manager, the vacation request is to be first processed by the automation- this usually takes 1 day, and based on the result, we can manually add the vacation days to the employee's Quinyx.
2. Employee is asking when they can request vacation
If the employee’s request was denied due to “not enough hub capacity”, recommend the employee to contact their hub manager for more information regarding the hub's operational availabilities for vacation days. In case the vacation days are operationally compatible, the hub manager can escalate the vacation days and these days can be later on approved based on HM escalation.
3. Hub Managers escalation tickets for Vacation
Hub managers can open tickets to Workforce Support to escalate a problem regarding employees' vacation. This can be related to the following topics:
Unpaid vacation. ( From 01.04.2025, Unpaid vacation can be approved only by the Area manager)
Paid Vacation rejected but approved by Hub Manager
Vacation manipulation
The Hub Manager's request can be found when solving the "HM Escalation - WF Support" tickets.
Unpaid Vacation Request: Generally, unpaid vacation days are requested by employees. When the employees directly request unpaid vacation days without the Area manager's escalation, use [VACATIONS] Rejection Unpaid Time Off macro to answer the employee. The employee will need a Area manager escalation for approval of unpaid vacation days
In the "HM Escalation - WF Support" tickets, you will come across requests by Area Managers requesting to approve unpaid vacation days for the employees.
Make sure to go through the message thoroughly to identify the vacation start and end dates if available
Once the HM or AM escalation is received, look for the escalated ticket number in the column on the left. Scroll down to see the escalated ticket number.
Look for the escalated ticket using the search bar. You will usually be able to identify the request for vacation and the processing by the automation tool.
Once the ticket is identified, thoroughly review the message to identify the vacation start and end dates.
Once the employee's hub is identified, you can go to Quinyx.
In Quinyx, select Flink SE Germany -> Employee's source hub as per SAP -> Schedule dropdown-> Schedule
Using the filter option on the right-hand top corner, search for the employee using the employee's name and/ or Quinyx ID
Hover over the etched region on the vacation start date to find the "plus" icon.
Click on the "plus" icon -> select Add absence
Check the "From" date and add the correct "To" date as per the vacation end date provided
In the "Absence type" dropdown, select "Unpaid Vacation"
In the "Manager Comment" insert "HM Escalation" to indicate that the unpaid vacation days were approved based on the HM escalation ticket
Sometimes, the hub managers only provide the employee IDs. Use the ID to identify the employee on SAP directly but make sure the hub manager has mentioned the vacation start and end dates.
Paid Vacation rejected but approved by Hub Manager: For a vacation that was rejected but the Hub Manager asked to approve you should follow the steps mentioned below:
In the "HM Escalation - WF Support" tickets, you will receive requests from Hub Managers to approve employee vacation days.
In the image here is one such escalation by a hub manager to approve vacation days.
Sometimes, the hub managers usually make mention of the vacation start and end dates in their message
Apart from the unpaid vacation days, the hub managers can escalate vacation requests for vacation that were rejected by the vacation tool for:
Missing 11-day notice
The hub capacity limit was reached
Once the HM escalation is received, look for the escalated ticket number in the column on the left. Scroll down to see the escalated ticket number.
Look for the escalated ticket using the search bar. You will usually be able to identify the request for vacation and the processing by the automation tool.
The vacation denials as mentioned can be for two reasons:
Based on the vacation denials, check the vacation balance of the employee on Zendesk using the vacation calculator.
Once the vacation balance is confirmed, check if the employee's requested vacation days is less than or equal to the vacation balance.
If the vacation balance <= requested vacation days, add the vacation days to the employee's Quinyx as follows:
Check the employee's SAP using their email address on the escalated ticket to identify the employee's hub.
Once the employee's hub is identified, go to Quinyx.
In Quinyx, select Flink SE Germany -> Employee's source hub as per SAP -> Schedule dropdown-> Schedule
Using the filter option on the right-hand top corner, search for the employee using the employee's name and/ or Quinyx ID
Hover over the etched region on the vacation start date to find the "plus" icon.
Click on the "plus" icon -> select Add absence
Check the "From" date and add the correct "To" date as per the vacation end date provided
In the "Absence type" dropdown, select "Vacation"
In the "Manager Comment" insert "HM Escalation" to indicate that the unpaid vacation days were approved based on the HM escalation ticket
In both cases of paid and unpaid vacation days, once the vacation days have been added to Quinyx, reply to the employee on their original Zendesk ticket using the macro [VACATIONS] Approval and adjust the macro as per necessity. Add an internal note with the HM escalation ticket number.
If the ticket is already closed, create a follow-up for the original ticket and let the employee know about the approved vacation days.
Go back to the hub manager escalation ticket and reply using the macro DE > EN > Hub manager escalation solved
For escalation tickets when the vacation request is in the future, we need to tell the Hub Manager to wait. Currently, we are processing vacation for the upcoming 18 weeks so the employee should soon receive the approval for the request.
Tip! If the vacation has still not been rejected, we must not reject it ourselves. We should leave the tool to auto-reject. However, we can manually create and approve the vacation without deleting the first one.
Vacation manipulation: In some cases, employees come back requesting manipulation of vacation days- either removing the approved vacation days partially or completely or moving the vacation days to a new date. In such cases, we need to recommend the employee contact their hub manager for escalation for manipulation requests. The hub manager will be able to assess if the vacation days can be manipulated without impacting the hub operations.
Once we receive the hub manager's escalation:
Check the employee's SAP using their email address on the escalated ticket to identify the employee's hub.
Once the employee's hub is identified, go to Quinyx.
In Quinyx, select Flink SE Germany -> Employee's source hub as per SAP -> Schedule dropdown-> Schedule
Using the filter option on the right-hand top corner, search for the employee using the employee's name and/ or Quinyx ID
Identify the changes to be made based on the ticket
Necessary changes in the form of addition, deletion, and modification of vacation start and end dates can be made.
In the "Manager Comment" insert "HM Escalation" to indicate that the manipulation of vacation days was approved based on the HM escalation ticket
Once the vacation days have been modified on Quinyx, reply to the employee on their original Zendesk ticket confirming the modification of the vacation days. Add an internal note with the HM escalation ticket number.
Go back to the hub manager escalation ticket and reply using the macro DE > EN > Hub manager escalation solved
Flowchart
FAQs and SOPs that could help/support the process
Question | Answer |
Do employees get paid for their vacation days when they quit? | If they are terminated by Flink, we have to pay them for vacation days and the notice period if we are not letting them do it. It is processed by People Ops and needs to be assigned to them. If they quit, they have to take their remaining days. If they cannot take their remaining days because of Flink (ie Christmas vacation ban), we pay them. If they quit and must leave straight away, it goes to people ops for a mutual termination agreement. |
Disabled people requesting more holidays, what should we do? | Every disabled person by law can request an extra 5 vacation days once per year. While requesting vacation absence they must also make a note about disability for an extra 5 days. Also, send us a ticket for those extra 5 days and include their disability card. 5 extra vacation days are given no matter if the person is still on probation or after. Once we approve it and send a vacation confirmation email we must include that they used those 5 disability extra days this year. |
Is it possible to transfer from the employee's previous job unused vacation days to Flink? | People operations should be doing it. In general, yes, it's possible if the previous employee tells how many vacations they have through an Urlaubsbescheinigung |
If an employee is sick during vacation will get the vacation days back? | Yes, if the employee gets sick before vacation, they will get the vacation days back. If they get sick during the vacation, they also get their days back. This does not apply during the first 28 days of employment. This counts always with the exception that the payment differs in the first 28 days or after 42 days, but the lost vacation days have to be refunded. Also, nobody should have a vacation in the first 28 days, ideally. |
Where do I find an employee's vacation balance on Quinyx? | Open the schedule tab, search for the employee, click on the employee's name, and click on ‘Time Card’, and the vacation balance will show on the right-hand side of the screen under ‘Time Trackers’ |
Review history
Number of Review | Date | Changes |
10 | 23.11.2023 |
Reviewed all info regarding accrual within the same year as the employee was hired.
Reviewed info regarding when 5-day logic was implemented
Added details on how to use the vacation cockpit.
Added an outline
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09 | 03.08.23 | Removed “Vacation tool - how to” as tool is now fully automated |
08 | 16.05.2023 |
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07 | 28.04.2023 |
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06 | 14.09.22 |
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05 | 01.03.22 |
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04 | 24.02.22 |
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Tools
- Zendesk - to check employee's ticket and vacation balance.
- SAP- to check employee's start/finish date.
- Quinyx - to add vacation days in case of HM escalation
Macros
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Macro name | Description |
[VACATIONS] Approval
| When a vacation is approved by us |
[VACATIONS] Rejection |
We had to reject the employee's vacation request. Remember to edit the reply to fit the case.
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[VACATIONS] Carry over & vacation balance
| To explain how the vacation carry over works. |
[VACATIONS] Rejection Unpaid time off |
Employee is requesting unpaid vacation days, we clarify the process and ask them to go through their hub manager
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[VACATIONS] How to request vacation |
When the employee is asking how to request vacation/asks us to add vacation for them.
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DE > EN > Vacation clarification (employees with 5-day working week, hired after 31.03.2023) |
Vacation policy explained
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DE > EN > Vacation clarification (employees with 6-day working week, hired before 31.03.2023) | Vacation policy explained |
Vacation removed
| When we need to delete an employees vacation |
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Contact reasons
Contact Reason | Description |
Operations > Vacations > General Question |
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Operations > Vacations > Payment Question |
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Operations > Vacations > Shift Question
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Operations > Vacations > Notification |
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