New feature: editable absence trigger settings

We’ve made Engage a little bit more amazing again by enabling advanced settings editing for end users. In English this means that any user with an Administrator profile can amend their company absence trigger settings. Up until now, Administrators had access to customise the absence registration forms and specify other company preferences. Now, we’ve added the absence trigger settings to the mix and that completes the set, making our users all powerful. Here are some answers to questions you might be thinking up:

What are absence trigger settings?

We refer to all notification and task settings in the absence world as ‘triggers’. These could be the trigger to prompt a return to work interview (simply a return to work after a period of absence should be the trigger here) or a condition for organising an absence review meeting (e.g. 3 spells of absence). Also included in the triggers are the standard notification settings for alerting managers to new absences or to updates and you can create your own settings to highlight any type of absence that you’d like to know about (e.g. stress-related or 3rd Monday in a row).

What if I don’t know what settings to create?

We have created standard absence trigger settings for all users. These standard settings are applied per default so you don’t need to be an absence expert to start off with. They include the email notifications to line managers when absences are reported and updated as well as a suggested set of action points:

Trigger 1: 2 spells in 3 months

Trigger 2: 3 spells in 12 months

Trigger 3: 9 days in 12 months, totalling a 4% personal absence level

These are not linked to a task by default but if you’d like to use these trigger points to prompt further action from your management team, you can easily create your own settings with the appropriate task added. When you become more of an absence expert, you might also want to review the trigger points and choose ones that work for your specific circumstances – in that case, simply disable the default triggers and create your own!

How do I become an Administrator?

The account owner automatically becomes an Administrator so if you create a new account, you will have access to the settings side straight away. If you’re an existing user and someone else created your user profile, you should ask them what level of access you were given. Or, you could simply log in and see if you have access to the tab labelled ‘Administration’ – and, if not, tell your sys admin to upgrade your profile!

I’ve looked through the settings and they’re all great but my company doesn’t use return to work interviews

In that case, we’d recommend you consider starting to use them! Return to work interviews are a really good way to manage absence. However, if you still think it’s not for you, you can opt out from the automatically created RTW tasks by disabling the trigger setting in your preferences.

Do you have any further questions? Fire away – our contact details are below.