Jobtech is an Italian employment agency that offers its own HR software designed to identify, hire, and manage staff.Jobtech aimed to develop a new feature, integrated into their HR software, to optimize employee absence management, reducing the time and workload for both employees and the HR department.
My team and I had to develop a new feature that allows HR managers to view and approve employee absence requests from client companies.
Similarly, each employee can manage their absences and time-off requests independently through a dedicated platform. This enables workers to submit absence requests autonomously, while supervisors can review and either approve or decline them.
Benchmarking competitors
During the discovery phase, we benchmarked key competitors offering absence request functionality to understand industry standards and assess the user experience. Competitors analyzed included Factorial, Dipendenti in Cloud, Personio, Jet HR, Zucchetti, Junior Web, RHEA, and HR managers' Excel sheets and emails.
Miro’s board with some screenshots of the benchmark.
Benchmark
We conducted 12 individual and online interviews, each lasting a maximum of 30 minutes, with Jobtech’s HR ands users from beta companies involved in the co-creation of the SaaS software with Jobtech.
These interviews focused on exploring needs related to the management of vacation and leave requests.
Document with the interview protocol.
Insights
After conducting numerous user interviews, contextual inquiries, and analyzing the collected data, we gained valuable insights. Here are a few key takeaways:
HR records absences in an Excel file, while supervisors maintain their own separate Excel sheets to manage their team’s absences.
Company supervisors and HR find email notifications useful for tracking employee absences, ensuring they don’t miss any updates.
Most employees lacked a tool to request absences, and supervisors had no automated system to approve or deny requests quickly.
Opportunity
Based on the insights gathered, we can develop a feature to optimize employee absence management. Here are a few key opportunities identified:
With the new feature, HR can manage absences in real-time from a single platform and export employee request history to external consultants when needed.
We can create a standalone platform for employees and supervisors to request and manage absences in a faster, more user-friendly way.Bye, bye Excel files!
Both the new feature and the standalone platform automatically send emails to notify HR, supervisors, and employees while managing and requesting absences.
User story
At the conclusion of the research phase, we defined several key user stories that form the foundation for the project's MVP:
Create, modify, delete, approve, or reject employee absences.
Export absence data at the end of the month.
Submit new absence requests.
Manage my created requests.
Perform the same tasks of the employee within the functionality.
User flow
We defined a high-level user flow to outline the objectives of each user and the key steps to achieve them. Users include Employee, Absence Supervisor, HR, and Labor Consultant.
We identified key touchpoints in the user journey: Jobtech SaaS, Email, Worker Platform, and CSV exports (document for exporting absences).
A screenshot of a Miro’s board with the user flow.
Structuring absences
Key functionality included defining absence request types, required documents or reference numbers, and supervisor approval.
For example, sick requests need a reference number (optional document) but no supervisor approval, while vacation requests require supervisor approval but no reference number or document.
A screenshot of a board with the specifications of each absence.
High fidelity mockups
We designed a dedicated absences section within Jobtech’s HR software for the HR manager.
For employees and supervisors, we created the Employee Portal, a standalone platform accessible on both desktop and mobile devices.
Left, Jobtech's HR software (SaaS). Right, the employee platform.
Assign the supervisor of absence
The HR manager invites employees to the absence request portal by logging into Jobtech HR software, opening each profile, and assigning a supervisor for approval in the designated section.
How assign the supervisor of employee’s absence.
Invite to the absence management platform
After assigning a supervisor, the HR manager invites the employee to the 'Employee Portal' by selecting the 'Invite to Employee Portal' button in their profile.
On the first day, the employee receives a welcome email with portal access details, their role, and instructions for managing absence requests, along with a direct link to the portal.
Left: Invitation modal. Right: Welcome email with portal access link.
Invite to the absence management platform
Employees can request absences through the platform.
After the onboarding screen, they can click 'New Request,' choose the request type, set the duration, and add a description.
The absence supervisor is pre-filled, with an option to select an alternative if unavailable.
An employee requesting an absence.
The supervisor is notified of the request
When an employee submits an absence request, the supervisor receives an email with the details. They can approve or deny the request from the email or the platform, where they can also review request history.
Left: the email with the absence notification. Right, the absence platform.
Approving or rejecting absence requests
The supervisor's platform has two sections: one for their own absences requests and another for their team's. Pending requests are displayed by default.
Supervisors can approve or deny requests via the menu, and once processed, requests automatically move to the appropriate section
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Approving or rejecting requests in the employee’s platform.
The employee is notified of the request status
After the supervisor approves or denies the request, the employee receives an email update and can access the Employee Portal to view request details and history.
Left: the email with the status of the request. Right, the full history of employee’s requests.
Managing and export absence requests
The HR manager can create and manage requests for themselves and employees in Jobtech's HR software, with options to approve, deny, modify, view details, or delete. At month-end, they can export the request history for reporting or external consultants.
Absence section in Jobtech's HR software.
Testing our absence management tool
After developing this project, Jobtech also decided to test the new experience of requesting and managing absences with our employees. As a result, all company HR and employees are now using the tool we designed to manage and request absences. Pretty awesome, right?
Projects where I’ve made an impact, transforming ideas into user-centered solutions and tangible results.
