Available for the following User Access levels: Employee, Manager, HR admin
The Calendar brings your team's time off and bank holidays together in one place, so you no longer need to check separate screens to understand who is away and when. You can see everyone's approved and pending time off, plus any blackout periods, in a single view scoped to the people you manage or work alongside. If you are a manager, you can also approve or decline time off requests directly from the calendar while you still see the rest of your team's coverage.
This article shows you how to manage the following:
- Find the Calendar
- Choose your calendar period and layout
- Filter the calendar to the right people and events
- Save your filter settings for next time
- Approve or decline time off without leaving the calendar
- Read the calendar indicators correctly
- Further information
Find the Calendar
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- Click People on the left-hand side menu.
- Click Personnel.
- Click Calendar, found near Organisation Chart.
What appears on the calendar depends on your role. Managers see full visibility over their direct and indirect reports. Employees see their own time off alongside approved time off from their teammates. If you are not assigned to any team, you see only your own time off and your own bank holidays. Team Row view is the layout you see by default.
Important
You need time off management permissions or a team membership to open the Calendar. Without either, Employment Hero redirects you away from the page.
Choose your calendar period and layout
- Open the Calendar.
- Click the view period option in the toolbar.
- Select Week, Fortnight, or Month.
If you switch back to a shorter period after you moved to a future month, the calendar keeps you within that month rather than jumping back to today.
- Click the forward or back arrows to move to the next or previous period.
- Click Today to return to the current date at any time.
The Calendar offers two layouts.
- Team Row view: shows one row per person, so you can scan a single date column and count who is away at the same time.
- Calendar view: shows a traditional monthly grid, useful for spotting quiet or busy patterns across a whole month.
- Click Calendar View to change from the row layout to the grid layout.
- Click Team Row View to change back.
Employment Hero remembers your chosen layout the next time you open the Calendar.
Filter the calendar to the right people and events
- Click the Filters button.
- Select a team, group, work location, or worksite to narrow the calendar to that group of people.
- Select specific employees if you only need to check on a few people.
- Clear your selections to bring everyone back into view.
You can combine more than one filter at a time. For example, select a team and a work location together, and the calendar shows only the people who match both, with both active filters shown clearly in the filter area. If nobody in your selected view has any time off for the period you are looking at, their rows still appear, just empty, with a visual cue that there is nothing to show.
- Click the Filters button.
- Select one or more time off categories, such as time off or sick time off, to show only those types.
- Select Approved or Pending under time off status to narrow the results further.
- Select a worker type, such as contractor or casual, to show only that group.
Public holidays and blackout periods stay visible when you filter by time off category or status. Turn these off separately using the display toggles below.
- Click the display toggles above the calendar.
- Turn off Time off to hide time off blocks while bank holidays and blackout periods stay visible.
- Turn off Bank Holidays to hide holiday indicators.
- Turn off Blackout Periods to hide shutdown period indicators.
Turn any toggle back on at any time to bring that information back into view. You do not need to reload the page.
Helpful Hint
The page URL reflects your filters, so you can copy and share a filtered view of the calendar with someone else on your team.
Save your filter settings for next time
- Set up the team, view, and display options you want.
- Click Save Filters. A confirmation appears, and a Reset Filters option becomes available.
- Click Reset Filters at any time to return to the default view. The Save Filters option becomes available again once you set up new filters.
Once saved, Employment Hero applies your filters automatically the next time you open the Calendar, so you do not need to set them up again. Your saved filters are personal. They do not change what anyone else on your team sees, and each person keeps their own last-saved view. The Save Filters button stays disabled until you change at least one setting from the default.
Approve or decline time off without leaving the calendar
- Click a pending time off block on the calendar.
- Review the request details in the side panel that opens on the right.
- Click Approve or Decline.
The side panel opens beside the calendar rather than over the top of it, so you can still see the rest of your team's coverage while you decide. Declining a request removes the time off block from the calendar and shows a confirmation that you declined it.
If your organisation uses two-level approval, clicking Approve sends the request to the second-level approver rather than finalising it straight away. The time off block stays marked as pending until that final approval takes place. If you are the final or only approver, clicking Approve updates the time off block immediately, and the side panel confirms the time off is now approved.
If you have time off viewing access but not time off approval permission, or if you are an employee, you can open a time off block to see its details, but no Approve or Decline option appears.
Read the calendar indicators correctly
Each time off block uses the colour assigned to its time off category in your organisation's time off settings, so you can tell time off, sick time off, and other types apart at a glance. Each block shows the team member's name and time off duration. A legend shows which colour corresponds to which time off type. Pending time off looks visually different from approved time off, and labels on each make their status clear.
Public holidays appear per team member based on their own work location, and the holiday name appears on the date. If two team members work in different states or countries, only the row belonging to the person in the observing location shows the holiday. The other person's row shows a normal working day.
Blackout periods, such as a Christmas shutdown, appear as a visual indicator across the affected dates, with the period name visible on or near the indicator. Some blackout periods apply to everyone, while others only apply to certain teams, locations, or employment types, in which case the indicator only appears on the rows of the people it affects. As an employee, you only see blackout periods that apply to you or your team. Blackout indicators look different from time off blocks, so you can tell a shutdown constraint apart from time off someone has actually taken. Click or hover over a blackout indicator to see its name and date range. If a blackout period runs across more than one month, the indicator only shows for the dates within the range you are currently viewing. Blackout periods are read-only on this page, so no approve or decline action appears for them.
If a team member has more than one time off request on the same day, such as one from 9:00 am to 11:00 am and another from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, each request appears as its own block with its time range shown. The blocks never merge into one. A full-day time off block spans the full width of the date cell, while split blocks on the same day are shown proportionally or stacked with their time ranges visible, so you can tell them apart from a full day of time off. This applies in both Team Row view and Calendar view, and to your own split time off requests as an employee, including any that are still pending. Click one of the blocks to open that specific request in the side panel. The other block on the same day is unaffected.
If a team member has approved time off with a start date but no confirmed return date, the time off block spans every visible day from the start date onward, with a trailing indicator to show there is no confirmed end date. The block keeps the colour of its time off category, since the open-ended indicator marks a duration rather than a different type of time off. This indicator stays visible in both Team Row view and Calendar view, and it continues to show on the time off block if you navigate forward to future months, so you can tell it is the same continuing time off rather than a new request. Click the block to open the side panel, where the dates field shows no return date set instead of an end date and the duration field shows Open-ended rather than a day count. The time off balance field shows the balance still accruing; you cannot finalise it while the time off remains open-ended. Once you enter a return date, the block updates to end on that confirmed date, the open-ended indicator disappears, and the side panel shows the actual duration.
Contractors and casuals display a badge on their row, so you know how to interpret their time off and availability without checking their profile. This badge is visible in both Team Row view and Calendar view. Employees with no special worker type show no badge. That person's row does not show time off categories that do not apply to their worker type, such as parental time off or long service time off for a contractor. Click a worker type badge to go to that member's profile, or view a tooltip with a link to their profile if the calendar cannot navigate there directly.
A team member with a future termination date still appears normally, with their time off shown as usual, for any dates before that date. Once their termination date has passed, they no longer appear in the calendar for current or future dates. If their last day falls partway through the range you are viewing, their row appears normally up to that date, and the remaining dates in their row show no time off data. When you look back at a past date range that included a now-departed team member, their row still appears with their time off and bank holidays for that period, along with an indicator such as Ended [date].
Further information
What if I am not assigned to a team?
You see only your own time off and your own bank holidays. No other employees' time off appears on your calendar.
Why can I not see a teammate's pending time off request?
As an employee, you only see approved time off from your teammates. A teammate's pending request stays private to them and their manager until approval. You can still see your own pending time off, marked with a visual indicator.
Why do I not see a Volunteer badge for a team member?
The volunteer worker type only appears on the calendar if your organisation has the Volunteers feature enabled. If it is not enabled, no volunteer rows or volunteer filter option appear.