Positive Action in Housing

For 10 years, Positive Action in Housing has been using WhosOff to effectively manage its staff leave, including holidays, sick leave and flexi-time.

Making sure someone is always there to help

WhosOff has been instrumental in helping Positive Action in Housing to plan and manage staff holidays as the organisation grows. Since 2020, the charity has doubled its workforce from 14 to 28 employees, and it has also moved from a fully office-based set-up to hybrid working.

With staff no longer sitting in the same room every day, teams are heavily dependent on WhosOff to stay informed on the whereabouts of their colleagues – as Caitlin Lambie, Human Resources Officer for Positive Action in Housing, explains.

As a rapidly growing charity, we must have a good system for tracking staff leave. WhosOff is such a simple platform; it doesn’t take much explaining to get people up and running. I also receive very few follow-up questions from recruits, which speaks volumes about how user-friendly the platform is.

Using a staff holiday planner empowers the Positive Action in Housing team to take control of their annual leave entitlement. With WhosOff, they can:

• Look up their annual leave balance rather than ask a manager.
• Manage their own holiday bookings and submit requests.
• Check the status of their leave requests.

With WhosOff, people don’t have to wait until they’re in the office to submit their leave requests or follow up on the holiday bookings they’ve already made. It saves a lot of questions.

WhosOff also helps to make staff holiday admin easier for managers at Positive Action in Housing. The charity has used WhosOff’s leave management features to:

• Set minimum staffing levels, ensuring there aren’t too many people on holiday at once.
• Create rules around which colleagues can book the same days off.
• Automatically reject holiday requests that don’t meet their criteria – saving vital time and effort for busy managerial staff.

A lot of the work we do is client-facing, so we need to ensure there are enough people to cover essential tasks and provide the services and support our beneficiaries need. WhosOff allows us to ensure there is always someone available to help.

In addition to providing good client support, Positive Action in Housing uses WhosOff as an internal tool to help employees maintain a healthy work/life balance. Managers can look up how much leave employees have taken, encouraging people with a sizable balance to book more time off.

Creating custom leave types for a clearer staff overview

It’s not just annual leave where WhosOff delivers significant value for Positive Action in Housing. The charity also manages its flexi-time system through the platform.

To further enhance people’s work/life balance, employees are allowed to work longer hours some days. They can then take this flexi-time alongside their annual leave allowance.

As WhosOff users can create custom leave types, Positive Action in Housing has set flexi-time as a separate category. Each leave type is colour coded, so it’s easy for staff to see who’s on flexi-leave versus who has booked time off using their holiday entitlement.

With WhosOff, it’s easy to distinguish not just who is away in your team but the reason they’re off.

Using WhosOff to track staff sick leave trends

WhosOff has also enabled Positive Action in Housing to document other absence types. For example, when employees call in sick, their manager will immediately add this information to the WhosOff system so colleagues can see they are unwell.

Caitlin then uses this data to follow up with people when they return to work, requesting documentation (if necessary) and checking on their well-being. She also produces regular reports for the board of trustees, highlighting holiday booking and sick leave trends to identify where team members may require additional support.

It’s easy to pull the specific data I need for HR purposes and produce reports in WhosOff. We’re able to track patterns and better support people’s well-being.

"An amazing tool for our charity".

WhosOff has become an essential tool for Positive Action in Housing, empowering the charity to effectively manage staff leave and streamline operations.

With its user-friendly interface, custom leave types, and reporting features, WhosOff has provided the organisation with the tools to ensure adequate staff coverage, support employee wellbeing, and remain accountable to trustees. But most importantly, it’s created an environment focused on providing the best possible support for migrants and refugees.

I don’t think we could have manually managed the growth we’ve experienced. We feel confident bringing in new people because we have a staff leave system that works for us and will continue supporting us as we grow. WhosOff is an amazing tool for our charity.

Are you a non-profit organisation? Why not try managing your holiday calendar online and spend less time on staff admin?
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Feedback provided by: Caitlin Lambie (Human Resources Officer)
Date: 7th July 2023.
Learn more about Positive Action in Housing