Earned Time Calculator
Business
problem
Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly when you will accrue another
week of vacation? If you take a couple Fridays off to make long
weekends, will you still have enough time available for the family
vacation? If your employer offers the option of "cashing out"
some vacation time, how much can you take without interfering with
year-end holiday plans? We thought it would be great to offer a
tool to help employees plan the use of their vacation time.
Getting
there
The earned time calculator is offered in two places on the intranet:
from the employee's timesheet and
from the employee's profile in People
Profiles. In Timesheet, the button called "View
benefit hours" opens the calculator (shown below).

In
People Profiles, the calculator is available from a link in the
Benefit Balances window (shown below).

How
it works
The calculator is pretty easy to use. For example (see image below):
- I
can carry over a maximum of 120 hours of earned time (a combination
of vacation, holiday and sick time) from one year to the next.
- I
accrue 11.07 hours of earned time in each biweekly payroll.
- I
have about 90 hours of earned time available as of the most recent
payroll.
- To
model the use of earned time through the next twelve months, simply
input a number of hours in any payroll period(s) and click the
Calculate button. The screen instantly displays updated earned
time balances for each payroll throughout the year.

Outcomes
- The
adoption rate for this application was startling. We released
it to production one afternoon without any announcement, thinking
no one would notice it for a while. Within a half hour, an employee
called to say it was the coolest thing ever, and others quickly
discovered the tool and raved about it.
- While
this isn't the sort of tool that has a dramatic ROI, it is an
added benefit of working at this organization, and presumably
improves employee satisfaction.
Lessons
learned
- If
you build it and they want it, they will come.
Posted 17 June 2008
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