The Kenjo End of Year Checklist

Modified on Wed, 30 Nov 2022 at 09:52 AM

The end of the year is coming up! These are times for important things, such as sharing with the family, taking some rest, or reflecting on experiences from the past and new goals. However, to leave room for what matters, there are some things regarding your processes in the company that you need to take care of first.

The last days of the year mean that the cycle to request and approve holidays might also come to an end in your organization. Most of our customers have chosen the 31st of December as the last day of the cycle for the holiday time off policies. Some others, might have chosen a different date. However, what it's important is that after the last day of the cycle (regardless of which date that might be), it will not be possible to make changes for the previous cycle.

So, for example: if the last day of the cycle for your holiday policy is on the 31st of December 2022 and, in 2023, an employee wants to request, edit or approve a time off from 2022, the employee's carry over days will not be adjusted automatically.

We have been working very hard on trying to optimize our time off policy configuration to avoid manual work, especially at the end of the year. As announced in our last product email, we will deploy several different improvements that will make the process of creating time off policies and adjusting balance much smoother, easier and automatic. However, these changes will only be reflected for next year in 2023.

For this year, we have prepared a list of all important issues and best practices, so nothing escapes you! Make sure you follow this advice before the last day of the cycle.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

All employees should request the holidays they wish to take
All managers should approve all pending Time off's requests
Enable the view of 'details' in the holiday policy card of employees
Add custom holidays in calendars for next year
Assign Time off policies for next year
Check recurrent Workflows

All employees should request the holidays they wish to take

Before the cycle ends, all your employees should request the holidays they wish to take in the current cycle, so no changes need to be done in the past. And speaking about requests, we suggest that this is also a good opportunity to remind your employees about your holiday time off policy and carryover days.

To make sure you share the right information about the carryover configurations you have set for the current cycle, follow the next steps:

Go to Settings > Time off > Settings and click on any of your time off types to check if they include carryover days.
On those time-off policies that have carryover days, click on the three dots to check the details.
Under Advanced options > Carry over to next year, check the date until the carryover is set, and the max days you have allowed your employees to take.

Note:

If you would like to modify this configuration before the year ends, remember that changes to policies may have an impact on active employees in this cycle.
Your employees will only be able to request time off from their carry-over days after the year ends.

Best practice:

You can also use Kenjo's Announcement feature to remind your employees about time-off requests and policies.

Announcement

Go to Home > Announcement. Add a description as the following and set a date when you want your post to be visible. Here is an example:

Example text:

Hello,

We are on the final stretch of this year. Do you have any holiday time-off left that you want to spend this year? Please remember to request all time off for this year BEFORE *DATE THAT THE CYCLE ENDS*. After this date, it is no longer possible to request time off for the current year and add it to the system.

We would also like to remind you that you have a maximum of XXX carry-over days per year, and you can only spend them until XXX of the consecutive year.

So if you haven’t done so, it’s time to plan some holidays! Request them in Kenjo by going to Time off > Vacation policy > REQUEST.

Best,

Your HR Team

All managers should approve all pending Time off's requests

To ensure all requests are processed before the cycle ends, the managers should not forget to approve all requests before the year ends.

Best Practice:

Create a workflow that will remind your managers (and yourself) to approve all pending time-off requests.

Email template:

Body text example:

Hello,

If you have pending time off requests from your direct reports, remember to approve them as soon as possible. The year is coming to an end and all requests need to be approved before *DATE THE CYCLE ENDS*. Click here to approve your pending requests. Thank you.

Best,

Your HR Team

Workflow configuration:

Action for the workflow:

Related articles:

Process Time off requests

Enable the view of 'details' in the holiday policy card of employees

To add more transparency, we recommend that you enable the DETAILS in the holiday policy card of employees. To do so, follow the next steps:

Go to Settings > Time off > Settings
Click on the time off type related to holiday
Click on the time off policy > three dots > edit policy
In the new menu, go to Advanced options and enable the option 'Show policy details in employee time off cards'
Click on UPDATE POLICY

Add custom holidays in calendars for next year

Go to Settings > Calendars. Check the calendars again and add the new custom holidays for the next year. Remember that your Custom Holidays are not automatically renewed for the consecutive year so make sure you repeat this process for all calendars you have.

Best practice:

You can create a workflow that will remind you of this process:

Email template:

Body of the email:

Hello,

The end of the year is coming. Remember to update your custom holidays before it ends! Click here to add the new custom holidays.

Best,

Your HR Team

Workflow configuration:

Action for the workflow:

Related articles:

Assign Time off policies for next year

Do you have new policies for next year? Remember that you need to assign those to your employees. Go to Settings > Time off > Time off Types > ADD NEW POLICY. Add the new policies for the upcoming year or modify the existing ones.

Then go to Time off > Company and roll the bar to the right-hand side of the screen. Click on the three dots and choose to Manage policies. You can add your new policies to all employees that these changes apply to.

Related articles:

Assign Time off's
Create Time off types and policies

Check recurrent Workflows

You might have established recurrent workflows throughout the year. Remember that a "recurrent workflow" repeats itself every year without requiring you to set up anything. Therefore, it is a good idea to check if you want these workflows to be triggered this upcoming year too. Go to Settings > Workflows, and check the list of workflows. Those with the Object "Recurrent Workflow" are the ones to have special attention to: