What does it mean for you?

We're making an important change to how sickness absence is recorded.

What's Changing and Why?

Currently, our sickness absence reporting is a slow, manual process that creates a lot of extra work. Our admin teams have to manually compile absence reports and send them to payroll, who then have to manually enter that information into our HR system, ResourceLink.

This process is a big pain point for everyone. The manual work leads to delays, and the information often isn't entered into the system in a timely manner. In addition, absence reasons are recorded in different ways across the university, which leads to inconsistent data and more work for staff and managers.

But we have some good news! Following a successful pilot, this October we will be rolling out an improved process that will make sickness absence reporting much simpler and more efficient.

Next steps

We've developed a new feature that enables individuals to record the reason for their sickness within the Flexileave system. This new tool was created in response to feedback from staff who wanted a more streamlined, efficient way to report sickness absence and has been designed to:

  • Reduce Manual Work: It eliminates the need for both admin and payroll teams to manually transcribe data, which will reduce pressure and administrative burden.
  • Enhance Privacy: By reducing the number of people who handle special category health data, we're better protecting your privacy and personal information.
  • Improve Data Quality: We'll be able to collect more accurate absence data, which will help us better understand and support staff well-being in the future.
  • Prepare for HR Finance Transformation by standardising our approach.

We’ve had great feedback from areas across the University piloting this process and we're excited to see how this change will improve our processes and support our staff.

We are working on launching these changes within the Flexileave system alongside our updated sickness absence policy and guidance. Look out for further updates in October.