Available for the following EmploymentOS plans: Employment Lite, Employment Plus, Employment Unlimited
Available for the following HR plans: Platinum
Available for the following user access levels: Admin
The Workflow feature lets admins set up multiple levels of leave approval or automatically approve/decline leave requests that meet certain requirements. This feature follows a "when-if-then" sequence for every step of the workflow. To learn more about this and see examples, please refer to The When-If-Then sequence and scenarios tab in the Further information section of this article.
View interactive demos
Getting started
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click the WorkFlows menu option.
- Click the Create New button.
- Select the Leave option and click the Create New button.
- Click the WHEN this happens field.
- Complete the following fields:
- When:
- Leave Request Created.
- Leave Request Fully Declined.
- Leave Request Fully Approved
- When:
- Click the Save button.
- Click the IF these conditions are met field.
- Complete the following fields:
- Field:
- Approve.
- Comments.
- Days of leave.
- Decline.
- End date.
- Hours of leave.
- Leave category.
- Employee.
- Start date.
- Team.
- Condition:
- Is one of.
- Is equal to.
- Does not equal.
- Is not one of.
- is today.
- is tomorrow.
- is next month.
- Value.
- Field:
- Click the Save button.
- Click the THEN do this field.
- Choose among the following actions.
-
Request Approval
- Approval Flow Type:
- All approvers must approve (sequential).
- All approvers must approve (parallel).
- Any approver can approve.
- Primary Approvers.
- Click the Add approver button for each approver you want to specify.
- Backup Approvers:
- Assign a backup approver for each approver.
- Use a single backup approver for all approvers.
- No backup approvers required.
- Backup approvers (Optional).
- Approval Flow Type:
-
Automatically Approve
- Approver's name.
-
Automatically Decline
- Decline reason.
- Decliner.
-
Helpful Hint
Send Email Notification includes several powerful capabilities:
- External Recipients: Send to anyone outside Employment Hero by typing a complete, fully formatted email address (e.g., john.smith@domain.com) into the Recipients field. Once you type the full address, an option will appear to add it as an external recipient—click to add.
- Clickable Hyperlinks: Click the link icon in the content editor to insert URLs or email addresses that recipients can click directly in the email.
- Dynamic Subject Lines: Click the dynamic variable button (right side of Subject field) to personalise subjects with employee names, dates, or other variables.
- Multiple Recipients: Search and select multiple roles, teams, specific employees, and external emails in one action—no need to create separate notifications.
Send Email Notification
- Type of recipients.
- Subject.
- Contents.
-
Create Task (useful for tasks such as ensuring proper handover of work and collecting all necessary documents to maintain compliance when an employee is on leave.)
- Name of task.
- Description.
- Owner.
- Send this task to an email address.
- Subtasks.
- Due date.
-
Request Approval
- Click the Save button.
-
Click the Save and Publish button.
Helpful Hint
You need to publish this workflow for it to become active. Any leave requests sent before the workflow becomes active will still need to be solved manually in the old way. Alternatively, you can ask employees to resubmit.
Important
If you are creating a custom workflow, we recommend to unpublish the default workflow before publishing a custom workflow to prevent conflicts and unexpected behaviours.
Available for the following EmploymentOS plans: Employment Plus, Employment Unlimited
Available for the following HR Classic plans: Free, Standard, Premium, Platinum
Available for the following user access levels: Manager, Admin
The Restrict Admin Overrides toggle button lets you enforce mandatory approvals for specific workflows. When on, admins cannot skip steps, ensuring compliance. The setting is locked once published for stability. If no approver is found with this on, the workflow owner is notified. Admins explicitly assigned as approvers can still approve. All override attempts are validated.
If toggled OFF:
- Admins can override approval steps as needed.
- However, in the case where the default workflow (OFF) and another custom workflow (ON) are published at the same time, any leave request that matches both workflows will have admin overrides restricted (even when it is off for the default workflow).
If toggled ON:
- Admins are strictly prevented from overriding any approval steps within that workflow.
- Employment Hero will fully enforce the designed approval path with no bypass allowed.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click the WorkFlows menu option.
- Click the Manage Workflows tab.
- Click Leave option.
- Click on the Restrict Admin Overrides tile.
- Click on the Workflow Settings button.
- In the pop-up screen, toggle on Restrict Admin Workflows. The toggle will appear purple when toggled on.
- Click Save in the bottom right-hand side of the screen.
Daily activities
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click the WorkFlows menu option.
- Click the Manage Workflows tab.
- Click Leave option.
- Click the button for the workflow you need to publish.
- Click the Publish button.
Important
If you are creating a custom workflow, we recommend to unpublish the default workflow before publishing a custom workflow to prevent conflicts and unexpected behaviours.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click the WorkFlows menu option.
- Click the Manage Workflows tab.
- Click Leave button.
- Click the button for the workflow you need to unpublish.
-
Click the Unpublish button.
Important
If the default workflow for Leave Requests is unpublished, managers will be unable to approve or decline leave requests (but admins still can). Those options will be greyed out.
For Leave Requests, we recommend you either keep the default workflow active or ensure another workflow is in place to allow these actions to proceed.
Editing data
Important
You cannot edit a published workflow. You have to unpublish it first before editing.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click the WorkFlows menu option.
- Click the Manage Workflows tab.
- Click Leave button.
- Click the button for the workflow you need to edit.
- Click the Edit button.
- Edit the workflow as needed.
- Click the Save button.
Deleting data
Important
You cannot delete a published workflow. You have to unpublish it first before deleting.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click the WorkFlows menu option.
- Click the Manage Workflows tab.
- Click Leave button.
- Click the button for the workflow you need to delete.
- Click the Delete button.
Further information
Important
The When-If-Then sequences of workflows can only follow a particular flow.
Step 1: WHEN (a trigger occurs), then step 2: IF (particular conditions are met), then 3: THEN (a certain action can occur).
This order cannot be changed. See the below accordion entitled 'Can I change the When-If -Then sequence?' for further information and examples.
The Employee File Change Workflows feature lets you create a set of steps that Employment Hero will take regarding expense claims. Each step follows the When-If-Then sequence, which is like this:
-
When this happens -> If this condition is met -> Then do this.
- "When" is the situation that will trigger the workflow.
- "If" is the condition that decides what action should be taken.
- "Then" is the action that the platform will take.
To visualise this better, please see the examples below relating to expense claims. "X" and "Y" in these scenarios refer to values you can pick and enter on Employment Hero.
- When an employee submits an expense claim request, If the expense claim amount is more than "X", Then the request will be sent to the executive leadership team for approval.
- When an employee submits an expense claim request, If the expense claim category is "X", Then the request will be automatically declined.
- When an employee submits an expense claim request, If the expense claim currency is "X", Then the request will be automatically approved.
- When an employee submits an expense claim request, If purchase start date is after "X" AND end date is before "Y", Then the request will be automatically approved.
No, the When-If-Then sequence cannot be changed.
An IF field must always come before a THEN field.
Examples:
| Set up | Will this work? | Why? |
| WHEN - IF - THEN | ✅ | IF field comes before the THEN field. |
| WHEN - IF - THEN - IF - THEN | ❌ | IF field comes after the first THEN field. |
You cannot perform a THEN action and then have the workflow re-evaluate new IF conditions as part of the same workflow run. You will need to split these into separate workflows.
When you click the "IF" field when creating a workflow, the "Add conditions" panel will slide out. There, you will have to fill in the following: Field, Condition, and Value.
Below those is the Add condition button, which lets you set up an additional condition to come with the first one. When you click this button, you will be asked to choose between:
- And condition - This means the platform will take action only if BOTH the original and additional conditions are met.
- Or condition - This means the platform will take action if EITHER the original or additional condition is met.
To demonstrate this, here are some examples:
And condition:
For the image below, the platform will act only if the expense claim amount is over 5,000 AND has a category of Miscellaneous. The platform will not take the specified action in the "THEN" field if both are not met, even if one of the conditions is followed.
Or condition:
For the image below, the platform will take action if the expense claim amount is over 5,000 OR has a category of Meal Allowance. There just needs to be at least one condition met for the platform to act. So, the workflow will still function if two, three, or more conditions were met.
For our example, this means the workflow will act if the expense claim amount is over 5,000, even if it falls under a different expense category. The platform will also function if the request is under the Meal Allowance category, even if the amount is less than 5,000.
Restrict Admin Overrides is evaluated at the time a request is triggered, not at the time an admin attempts to override.
Once a request is created, it inherits the toggle setting from the workflow version that was active at that moment.
This enforcement state is persisted for the lifetime of the request, even if the workflow is later unpublished or the toggle is changed.
This ensures:
- Consistent enforcement for each request.
- No retroactive changes to approval rules
- Clear audit trails and compliance alignment
- If you are creating a custom workflow, we recommend to unpublish the default workflow before publishing a custom workflow to prevent conflicts and unexpected behaviours.
- Because of the above, clients need to ensure all scenarios are considered when making custom leave workflows. If a user meets criteria in multiple workflows, only one will trigger at random, which can cause unpredictable results. This is a common issue often when a custom leave workflow is created but the default has not been unpublished. If a user meets a workflows’ criteria multiple times, only the first matching pathway will trigger.
Don't have access to this feature? Contact our friendly sales team here if you’d like to upgrade your account to gain access to leave workflows with Employment Hero today.
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