Workday Guide - Requesting Time Off
This guide shows how employees may request time off on the Workday system, and the approval process
that follows. In normal circumstances requests are sent to the employee’s line manager unless this
responsibility has been appropriately delegated within the team (in some teams this may be the PA, for
example). This person is known as the Approver.
Important: Please note that this system can only be used for short term time off of no more than one month
at a time, and includes the following types of leave:
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Annual Leave
Bought Holiday
Jury Service (you will be required to provide supporting documentation)
Reserve Military Service (you will be required to provide supporting documentation)
Sick Leave (if you have been absent for some time, your line manager or HR may have recorded
these details on your record, but you should check that this is correct when you return).
Time off for Dependants
Statutory Time Off (e.g. if you have volunteered for public duties which allow you to have additional
time off in additional to your normal holiday entitlement e.g. acting as a magistrate)
Away from the Office (e.g. visiting another office, or study leave)
If you want a quick way to review all holidays taken in your Division/Department, refer to the FAQ section at
the back of this guide.
In addition Workday can be used to record time away from the office. This includes:
Business Trips
Client Site visits
Corporate Days
Exam Leave
Medical Appointments
Study Leave
Time off in Lieu
Training Courses
Working from Home
Non-holiday requests (with the exception of business trips or approved working time away from the office)
should always be discussed with your line Manager first and approved in principle before submitting the
request through Workday.
Any Compassionate Leave requests (either paid or unpaid) must be discussed with your Manager who will
have to initiate the change in Workday.
If you want to book off a longer period (e.g. long term parental leave) then please speak to your line manager
who will liaise with your HR Business Partner. Note that some categories of time off must be booked by
contacting HR. This is to ensure that the Group complies with employment law and regulations.
Instructions to Book Time Off
1. Login to Workday. From the Home Screen,
click on the ‘Time Off’ icon
2. Under the ‘Request’ menu, click ‘Time Off’.
3. Use the arrows to select the correct month.
Then click on each day in the calendar to
select the dates you wish to book time of for.
The date will change to light blue when
selected.
Click the day again to deselect. Follow this step
for full days, half days and booking off hours.
For annual leave, the number of days left to
book will be shown.
Important: If you need to book a mixture of full
days and half days, then this will require two
separate requests. Full days and half days
cannot be selected on the same request.
4. Once the relevant days have been selected,
click on the ‘Request Time Off’ button at the
bottom left of the screen.
Important: Note that if you are requesting a
half day or time off in hours, still click the
button. The amount of time being booked is
confirmed in the following Workday screen.
Clicking this button will not automatically book
the entire day.
Continued on next page.
5. A new screen will appear. The mandatory fields
are marked with a .
Select the appropriate type (e.g. Annual leave).
Typically, the ‘Daily Quantity’ will default to ‘1’
which means full days. To change the request
to half days, change this value to ‘0.5’.
If you are a part time employee or have an
irregular work pattern, then your Annual
Leave will be booked in hours. Please refer
to training document ‘Requesting Annual
Holiday in Hours’ for more information
For adding attachments (such as a medical
certificate / doctor’s note):
When complete, Click ‘Submit’.
Important: A number of sub-categories are
contained within the ‘Away From Office’ option.
This includes study leave, medical
appointments and exam leave. Select the
correct type in the reason field. Note that this
type of leave is booked in hours (see below).
Important: If your time off is due to sickness,
please submit a medical certificate / doctors
note as required. This can be done by
attaching a scanned version in the
“Attachments” section here.
6. The calendar will now show the requested days
in grey and an approval request will have been
sent to your line manager. To request more
time off, select the days from the calendar (go
to step 3).
Approved Time Off Requests
When the Approver approves your request, you will receive a notification in Workday. No further action is
necessary.
Time Off Booked in Hours
To allow greater flexibility, some categories of time off (such as ‘Away
From Office’) are booked in hours, not days. When selecting a category
that is booked in hours, the screen will change to show ‘Unit of Time:
Hours’ (see screenshot).
Update the number in the ‘Daily Quantity’ field to reflect the number of
hours required for each day.
Amending Returned Time Off Requests
If your request is not approved, the Approver will return the request to you. It will appear as a task to
complete in your Workday inbox.
Instructions to Amend a Returned Time Off Request
1. Login to Workday. There should be a task in
your Workday Inbox. Click on this task.
2. The task will appear on the right hand side.
From here it is possible to:
Add additional dates (click the + symbol)
Remove dates (click the – symbol by the date)
Change dates to full days or half days (change
the ‘Requested’ number as appropriate)
Once all of the dates have been amended,
click ‘Submit’.
Important: A Time Off request cannot be
completely deleted using this process. See
below to delete an unapproved request.
3. The time off request will now be resubmitted to
your line manager with the amended dates.
Cancelling an Unapproved Time Off Requests
To completely cancel a request that has not been approved, a different process is required. This process is
the same for requests that have been returned and those that are in the Approver’s Inbox.
Please follow these instructions to cancel a request.
Instructions to Cancel an Unapproved Time Off Request
1. Login to Workday. From the Home Screen,
click on the ‘Time Off’ icon
2. Under the ‘View’ menu, click ‘My Time Off’.
3. On the list of requests, find one of the dates
that you wish to cancel.
Under the ‘Time Off Event’ column, hover your
cursor over the text in the respective row (do
not click on the text). A small image with three
dots will appear . Click on this image.
Under ‘Actions’ hover over ‘Business Process’
and click ‘Cancel’
4. The next page will show all of the dates in the
request. Enter a comment and click ‘Submit’ to
cancel the request. Then Click ‘Done’.
5. The request will still show, but will now show a
status of ‘cancelled’.
To change or cancel a time off request that has been approved, read on.
Amending or Cancelling Approved Time Off
To amend approved time of, any additional dates will need to be submitted via a new request. It is possible
to reduce or cancel approved time of using the following process.
Instructions to Reduce or Cancel Approved Time Off
1. Login to Workday. From the Home Screen,
click on the ‘Time Off’ icon
2. Under the ‘Request’ menu, click ‘Time Off
Correction’.
3. In the table, under the ‘Correction to
Requested’ column, change any dates that are
no longer required to ‘0’. Dates can also be
amended from full days to half days and vice
versa.
The cancel the entire time off, change all dates
to ‘0’
4. When all of the dates have been corrected,
click ‘Submit’.
5. The time off correction request will now be
resubmitted to the Approver for approval.
Viewing Time Off Information
Instructions to View Time Off
1. Login to Workday. From the Home Screen,
click on the ‘Time Off’ icon
2. To view all time off requests (approved,
awaiting approval and cancelled), click
‘My Time Off’.
Use this view to check if Time Off requests
have been approved.
3. To view remaining time off for the period, click
‘Time of Balance’ and select the end date of
the appropriate holiday year period (e.g. 31
December if the holiday year runs from the 1
January)
FAQ
Q.
A.
Is it possible to view the time off of someone else in the team?
This is not possible in Workday, unless someone is a line manager in which case they can view the time
off of their direct reports (Details of how to do this are contained in the Workday Guide- Managing Team
Time off).
However, a simpler process to access this information is to use the Workday Calendar for the UK
available via the UK intranet website. If you select the “Workday Calendar” link
on the intranet homepage, you can choose to see time off for other
people in your Division and your Department.
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Select the Month & Level in the top left hand corner:
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Then click ‘View Report’ in the top right hand corner:
Q.
A.
Why is it not possible to request time off for long term leave on the system?
Such leave can affect payroll and it is important that any requests go through HR.
Q.
Can I save a half completed time off request for later?
A.
Yes. Simply click ‘Save for later’ in the task screen. The task will be saved in your Workday Inbox for the
future.