What the account Administrator needs to know

HR administration is not as simple as it may seem. And because we know this, we've prepared a simplified guide to help you set up Sloneek. Try not to skip the steps, trust us, we know why. If you don't need some of the sub-functionality, move on. But still go step by step. Here we go:)

What you will find in the article👇

Setting up the basics

✅ It won't work without users

First, familiarize yourself with the user roles in the application. This is key to understanding and deciding what rights to assign to each user within the application.

To add new users to the application:

• manually
• by importing from Google Workspace or Microsoft Active Directory (if you don't know what we're talking about, ask IT)

You can then edit each user's card to suit your needs. Learn more about setting up and managing users here.

✅ Create teams and have a perfect overview of your company structure

In order for your people to effectively approve absences or work with competency models, it's a good idea to first create teams and assign users to them. Simply create a new team in the Company / Teams section by clicking on the Add button. 

Then enter the name of the team and its parameters. Here you can select a team manager who will approve absences or add evaluations, and also assign additional roles to some users such as Supervisor, Activity Planner, or Arrivals and Departures Manager. You can read more about each role here.

You can also read more details about the teams and the company structure in our article.

 

✅ What are your employees' work contracts?

Creating, setting up and assigning working hours to users is absolutely crucial for the ability to draw absences and for reports to work properly. Therefore, make sure that every user will have working hours assigned. 

You create and set up the working hours in the Settings / Work contracts setup. You then assign it to users in their user tabs under the Contract and Payroll tab.

Detailed instructions on how to set working hours can be found here. 

✅ Everyone needs to go to the doctor or on holiday sometimes

You can create new types of absences that each user will be able to draw in Settings / Absence. After clicking on the Add button, select which type of absence it is and set its parameters. You can read about setting up absences in more detail in our article.

Once you have created an absence, don't forget to assign it to users. The easiest way to do this is to go to the Bulk setting of absences section, where you will allow selected users to use absences. From here, you also have the option to set whether you want the absence to be subject to supervisor approval or to be approved automatically.

 

✅ How do you intend to record work?

We know from experience that everyone has a slightly different idea of attendance. To help you decide which of our modules for recording work is really the most suitable for you, the following breakdown will help you:

🙋 A. Arrivals and Departures

Keep track of when employees come to work and when they leave.

Each user records all clock-ins and clock-outs using a terminal, mobile or web app. As part of the reporting, we'll show you the balance of recorded attendance against working hours.

To set up the entire module, including setting up the attendance terminal, follow the instructions here.

 

⏱️ B. Activities and time tracking

Record the time spent on each work activity. Employee arrivals and departures are not that important to you.

Employee clock-ins and outs are not that important to you. But what you want to track is the timesheet. Users record time spent on specific activities. The logging is done through a mobile or web app. By entering the event into a reporting calendar or using an automated time counter.

Check out the article here to see in more detail how time tracking can be used.

Follow the instructions here to set up the module. If you want to sort the reported work into specific client projects, follow the instructions here.

 

🏖️ C. Working hours and absences

Set only working hours and manage absences. Tracking arrivals and departures or measuring time spent on activities is not important to you.

Bingo! 🤗 You have already set up working hours and absences in the previous steps.

 

✅ Hide modules you don't need

Following on from the previous step, you may also want to consider whether it would be beneficial for you to completely hide modules from employees that they don't use. For example, if you choose to record work using Activities but don't need to track employee arrivals and departures, you can simply turn off the entire Arrivals and Departures module so that it doesn't confuse users unnecessarily.

You can do this in the Company / Users / Visibility of modules section. In the respective columns you will find green and red locks - green means that the user has the module enabled, red means that the module is hidden to the user.

✅ Experience the simplicity and robustness of reports

Reports are the unwavering pillar of systematic work. Try entering some absences or a few work activities into a calendar for a test user and generate your first Sloneek report! You'll see how simple yet robust it is in the number and detail of parameters tracked. Of course, you can also export all reports in XSLX or CSV format.

You can learn in more detail about working with reports in our article.

✅ Take full advantage of integrations

Interconnectivity is extremely important today. We are aware of this, which is why we offer the possibility to connect your Sloneek account with other commonly used office tools and software. You can integrate and manage them in My Profile / Integration and Settings / Integrations respectively. Detailed instructions on how to proceed in specific cases can be found by clicking on the following links:

• Slack
• Google Workspace
• Google Calendar
• Microsoft
• IceWarp
• Jira

✅ Trust box and whistleblowing

You don't need to set up anything in the trustbox, it's just a good idea to familiarize yourself with how it works. If you need to implement a whistleblower protection system in light of legislation, be sure to check out our solution here.

 

✅ Now just check the billing information

We're at the end of the guide and there's only one thing left to do to use Sloneek smoothly: fill in the company's billing information in Settings. In this section, you can also save your credit card to simplify future transactions or add an email address to the person responsible for billing in your company. All invoices will then be sent to the company's main contact email (which you can also change from this section) and to the newly added address.

 

As always, if you need help with payment details or invoices, you can read about it in our Help Center or contact our support team. 🙂

 

 

Now we're going to take a look at the other modules, their settings and usage.

✅ Recruitment (ATS)

Are you about to recruit new colleagues? Try our recruitment module (ATS)! It allows you to create a new job offer that you can modify to your liking and then share on your website, set up the different stages of recruitment and move candidates between them, or move unsuccessful candidates to the Talent Pool so you can reconnect with them in the future. 

You can read in detail about the recruitment module's features and functions in our article.

✅ On / Offboarding

A key activity for every recruiter. To create a truly great employee experience, you need to be in full control of onboarding. 

You do everything through a set of tasks prepared in templates. The first step is to look at how to work with templates. Running task agendas from templates is actually very simple. Not only for Administrators (i.e. you), but also for your colleagues who will be involved in the task execution. It is up to you as administrators to check the execution in a clear environment.

Colleagues to whom you assign checklists will immediately see the tasks on their desktop.

✅ Share documents with your colleagues

In Sloneek you can sign documents with an electronic signature compliant with the EU eIDAS standard. This allows you to electronically process not only employment contracts, but also directives, regulations and other documents that you need to have signed by users. 

However, you can also sign documents with those persons who do not have an account in Sloneek. All without a limit on the number of signatures. 

Check out the short article describing the actual work with documents, you'll also want to see how signing works, or how to work with templates to simplify the work of generating the documents you assign.

✅ Upload company assets to Sloneek

A clear management of the assets for all users is invaluable. As with documents, handover reports are signed electronically, the tools are registered with the individual users, so that not only you as administrators, but also the users themselves have an overview of the items handed over.

The good news for first-time setups is that the assets can be imported, so you don't have to manually overwrite the information. The management of the assets themselves is very detailed and intuitive at the same time. Take a look at how to work with the assets in a short overview.

✅ Setting and controlling objectives, evaluation of competences

In the evaluation section, you have access to evaluation questionnaires, the creation and evaluation of competences and the setting and evaluation of objectives (OKRs, KPIs). For a detailed overview of the setup of the entire section, please see this article. For inspiration and help, we have prepared the following sections

• Inspiration for the implementation of performance assessment with OKRs

• Inspiration for building and evaluating skill sets / competency models

✅ Company Dashboard

Involving people in company life is extremely important. Who's taking home office, who's on a business trip or on vacation today? Who is going to have a birthday or anniversary? Company announcements and kudos all in one place? At Sloneek, this communication takes place on the Dashboard. How does it work? Check out the detailed description.

✅ Surveys

You no longer have to create surveys in separate questionnaires. Anonymous and non-anonymous questionnaires, specialized data collection for eNPS and more.

Be sure to take a look at how to prepare and send out a survey, how to complete and analyze the results, and last but not least, take a look at how we work with eNPS.

 

✅ We remind good communication to the team!

As we mentioned above, we know from experience that introducing an app into a company is sometimes quite painful. That's why we've prepared a detailed guide for not only you, but also your people on the First Steps in the app. The information is clearly broken down by role, including a downloadable manual.

In order for users to log into the app, you need to activate them.

 

✅ Sloneek will notify you of potential problems

It is very useful to check the Settings section from time to time - and especially during initial setup. If Sloneek finds possible errors in the application (e.g. some users will be missing their assigned working hours), it will notify you immediately here. Everything is highlighted in red so you can't miss it. 😊

 

The account Administrator has the ability to control specific application settings in terms of visibility or hiding certain functionality such as:

• visibility of absences or activities of everyone across the company
• editing of time tracked activities
• not showing details of other company members' activities to regular users
• displaying the organisational structure
• validation of important documents with a written (electronic) signature
• hiding meal vouchers or trust boxes
• hiding certain elements (widgets) on the company noticeboard
• require increased password protection
• and more.

These settings can be made in Settings / Application Settings.

To make it easier for us to import your users into the system, we've put together a bulletproof list of steps and recommendations (read requests) on how you should fill out the import template correctly.

To create a user in the application, we need to know a few details that are mandatory fields to fill in the template (columns are marked in orange):

• First name
• Last name
• Email
• Is admin?
• Shall we activate this user?
• Has GDPR consent been given?
• Is permanent residence same as contact address?

All other details are completely optional and it's up to you what you want to have filled in for your users.

Each email must be unique. So it is not possible, for example, to create two users for the same email. Also watch out for typos and diacritics in email addresses. 

Fill in the table as shown in the first row (or rather row 3). When you click in a cell, you will also automatically see the instructions. For a successful import, the date must be in the correct format (06/22/2023) or where you are selecting between 0 and 1, only 0 and 1 are actually typed in (and not, for example, YES and NO). 😊

Do not change the order of the columns or delete any columns! If you don't need them, leave them blank. The same applies to the sheets. Their names and order must remain the same. Do not add your own sheets, we will not be able to import the file.

For the Country / Region of operation column, you must select countries and regions from the available selection of countries and regions. Just click in the cell and select for example United Kingdom, Scotland and then copy to other users.

A similar thing applies for the Gender column. Click in the cell and select from four options: male, female, other, prefer_not_to_say. Alternatively, copy in bulk to other users. Again, though, the data in the cells must match these four options. For example, if you enter Male instead of male (or just M), we can't import the data without difficulty. Same applies for the column Employment state - (life cycle).

Watch out for extra spaces and "invisible" characters in empty cells. We've been flooded a few times by an inadvertently "filled" line with five spaces etc. 🙃

Are you missing any information in your user tab in Sloneek? Create it! There are custom user fields for this purpose. In the import template, you'll find them completely at the end and you can add an unlimited amount of them according to the template. Always just name the actual field in the row at the very top (in the example below, for example, number of fingers, nickname, etc.) and enter the desired values in the cells.

For the work contract type and salary, you must fill in at least the start of validity of this work contract or salary. In the case of an indefinite period, leave column V (Valid to) blank.    

And that's it! You have filled in the import template perfectly. 💪 Thank you!

HR administration is not as simple as it may seem. And because we know this, we've prepared a simplified guide to help you set up Sloneek. Try not to skip the steps, trust us, we know why. If you don't need some of the sub-functionality, move on. But still go step by step.

Here we go:)

✅ It won't work without users

First, familiarize yourself with the user roles in the application. This is key to understanding and deciding what rights to assign to each user within the application.

To add new users to the application:

• manually
• by importing from Google Workspace or Microsoft Active Directory (if you don't know what we're talking about, ask IT)

You can then edit each user's card to suit your needs. Learn more about setting up and managing users here.

✅ Create teams and have a perfect overview of your company structure

In order for your people to effectively approve absences or work with competency models, it's a good idea to first create teams and assign users to them. Simply create a new team in the Company / Teams section by clicking on the Add button. 

Then enter the name of the team and its parameters. Here you can select a team manager who will approve absences or add evaluations, and also assign additional roles to some users such as Supervisor, Activity Planner, or Arrivals and Departures Manager. You can read more about each role here.

You can also read more details about the teams and the company structure in our article.

 

✅ What are your employees' work contracts?

Creating, setting up and assigning working hours to users is absolutely crucial for the ability to draw absences and for reports to work properly. Therefore, make sure that every user will have working hours assigned. 

You create and set up the working hours in the Settings / Work contracts setup. You then assign it to users in their user tabs under the Contract and Payroll tab.

Detailed instructions on how to set working hours can be found here. 

✅ Everyone needs to go to the doctor or on holiday sometimes

You can create new types of absences that each user will be able to draw in Settings / Absence. After clicking on the Add button, select which type of absence it is and set its parameters. You can read about setting up absences in more detail in our article.

Once you have created an absence, don't forget to assign it to users. The easiest way to do this is to go to the Bulk setting of absences section, where you will allow selected users to use absences. From here, you also have the option to set whether you want the absence to be subject to supervisor approval or to be approved automatically.

 

✅ How do you intend to record work?

We know from experience that everyone has a slightly different idea of attendance. To help you decide which of our modules for recording work is really the most suitable for you, the following breakdown will help you:

🙋 A. Arrivals and Departures

Keep track of when employees come to work and when they leave.

Each user records all clock-ins and clock-outs using a terminal, mobile or web app. As part of the reporting, we'll show you the balance of recorded attendance against working hours.

To set up the entire module, including setting up the attendance terminal, follow the instructions here.

 

⏱️ B. Activities and time tracking

Record the time spent on each work activity. Employee arrivals and departures are not that important to you.

Employee clock-ins and outs are not that important to you. But what you want to track is the timesheet. Users record time spent on specific activities. The logging is done through a mobile or web app. By entering the event into a reporting calendar or using an automated time counter.

Check out the article here to see in more detail how time tracking can be used.

Follow the instructions here to set up the module. If you want to sort the reported work into specific client projects, follow the instructions here.

 

🏖️ C. Working hours and absences

Set only working hours and manage absences. Tracking arrivals and departures or measuring time spent on activities is not important to you.

Bingo! 🤗 You have already set up working hours and absences in the previous steps.

 

✅ Hide modules you don't need

Following on from the previous step, you may also want to consider whether it would be beneficial for you to completely hide modules from employees that they don't use. For example, if you choose to record work using Activities but don't need to track employee arrivals and departures, you can simply turn off the entire Arrivals and Departures module so that it doesn't confuse users unnecessarily.

You can do this in the Company / Users / Visibility of modules section. In the respective columns you will find green and red locks - green means that the user has the module enabled, red means that the module is hidden to the user.

✅ Experience the simplicity and robustness of reports

Reports are the unwavering pillar of systematic work. Try entering some absences or a few work activities into a calendar for a test user and generate your first Sloneek report! You'll see how simple yet robust it is in the number and detail of parameters tracked. Of course, you can also export all reports in XSLX or CSV format.

You can learn in more detail about working with reports in our article.

✅ Take full advantage of integrations

Interconnectivity is extremely important today. We are aware of this, which is why we offer the possibility to connect your Sloneek account with other commonly used office tools and software. You can integrate and manage them in My Profile / Integration and Settings / Integrations respectively. Detailed instructions on how to proceed in specific cases can be found by clicking on the following links:

• Slack
• Google Workspace
• Google Calendar
• Microsoft
• IceWarp
• Jira

✅ Trust box and whistleblowing

You don't need to set up anything in the trustbox, it's just a good idea to familiarize yourself with how it works. If you need to implement a whistleblower protection system in light of legislation, be sure to check out our solution here.

 

✅ Share documents with your colleagues

In Sloneek you can sign documents with an electronic signature compliant with the EU eIDAS standard. This allows you to electronically process not only employment contracts, but also directives, regulations and other documents that you need to have signed by users. 

However, you can also sign documents with those persons who do not have an account in Sloneek. All without a limit on the number of signatures. 

Check out the short article describing the actual work with documents, you'll also want to see how signing works, or how to work with templates to simplify the work of generating the documents you assign.

 

✅ Now just check the billing information

We're at the end of the guide and there's only one thing left to do to use Sloneek smoothly: fill in the company's billing information in Settings. In this section, you can also save your credit card to simplify future transactions or add an email address to the person responsible for billing in your company. All invoices will then be sent to the company's main contact email (which you can also change from this section) and to the newly added address.

 

As always, if you need help with payment details or invoices, you can read about it in our Help Center or contact our support team. 🙂