Leave Management Workflow for Roster App
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Difficult to update and keep track of the leave status
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Time consuming to maintain paper-based and spreadsheet records and are prone to mistakes
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No visibility on the leave request status
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No visibility on the qualification and compliance of external backfill workers
Background
Leave management stands as a vital component within the rostering system for mine sites. The process involves many variables and must seamlessly handle changes that may occur at any given time.
Requirement
The system must efficiently manage leave and coverage requests for both internal employees and external contractors, addressing the consequences effectively when changes occur.
Challenges
Managing leave for mine site workers is complicated as the whole process involves numerous entities, relationships, and status changes. The primary hurdle lies in visualising the workflow in a way that is intuitive for users, making it easy for them to navigate and initiate changes. The UI must effectively communicate the status of current leave requests and the outcomes of users' intended actions.
User Interview
We conducted interviews with numerous mine site workers and contractors to grasp the intricacies of leave management on site. Currently, leave management relies heavily on paper-based rosters, spreadsheets, and requests are typically communicated through texts and phone calls. We identified several pain points that require attention:
Concept Development & Validation
Design Goal
An intuitive UI and workflow that
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Offer visibility: inform users on current status of the leave request
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Provide required information for users to make decisions and take actions
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Efficient to use: make it easier to manage leave than using spreadsheets
Match between the system and the real world
During user research , we spent quite a lot of time to understand how leave management works in mine sites. We learned the workflow and logics, and a few concepts and we would like to apply to our design.
Leave Request Status
When a leave request is created, the initial status is pending and awaits supervisors to approve or reject. The supervisors can choose to approve the request with or without backfills.
Leave Coverage
Both employees and external contractors can opt in to cover a leave. Supervisors can choose to select candidates internally or send out coverage requests to contractors. There are two factors that needs to be taken into consideration: worker's qualifications and availability.
Cope with Changes
The system needs to cope with modifications and changes alone the way. Users might cancel a leave request or change the dates. Once the changes occurs, the UI needs to inform all users involved and provide information on how they can respond.
Provide visibility of system status to all users involved
The system should keep all stakeholders informed about current leave request status and any changes occurred. They should know what's going on and any actions they can take.
The balance between recognition and recall
There are many information and actions required from users who involved. The challenge is how to present and organise those input interfaces and workflows. We've tried:
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Showing all options and actions on the same page
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Breaking it down into steps, each step requires only one or few actions
Showing all options and actions on the same page
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Good: efficient to use; less clicks; sense of control.
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Bad: increase user's cognitive load by presenting too much information on one page; error-prone.
Break it down into steps, each step requires only one or few actions
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Good: easy to use; reduce user's cognitive load by presenting only necessary information.
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Bad: too many clicks.
Results
Future Development & Takeaways
The web app can further integrate the following features :
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Real-time leave & backfill :
Allow users to express their interests of covering shifts. When a team member is on sick leave, others available can opt in for backfill.
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Better Search:
Allow users to search the whole hierarchy or from current location.
🎓 What I've learned:
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Storytelling Skills for design decisions:
When doing design reviews with stakeholders and developers, it's very handy to apply "before and after" comparison and focus on the improvement the new design will bring. Include the consideration and usability principles to make the augments more compelling.
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Providing instant feedback:
When selecting leave start & end dates, user's feedback is that they would like to know how many shifts / hours are within the selected time frame while choosing the dates.
We added a calculator to the bottom of datepicker to provide instant feedback. Users can validate their selection before leaving the datepicker and save time for clicking the datepicker to adjust.
