In Personio, employees with Propose access rights can suggest changes to employee information. Approval processes help ensure these changes are accurate. Administrators can assign approvers, who receive tasks to review and approve suggested changes to the following data:  

• Time off (example: approving paid leave requests)
• Attendances (example: approving working hours)
• Employee data (example: approving changes to attributes in the employee profile)

Changes are only finalized in Personio once all responsible approvers action the tasks.  

Default approvals apply to all employees in your company with propose access rights to any of the above data types. You must set up a process for each data type that employees have proposal rights to, including individual time off types. To exclude specific employees from the default approval process, use special rulesets. 

Before you start

• You must be an Administrator to set up approvals.
• Employees can only suggest changes and trigger an approval process if they have the "Propose" access right for the relevant data.
• If no approval steps are set up when the proposal right is assigned, the access converts to edit rights. This means employees can edit data without review. For more info, see our article on Access Rights.

Set up a default approval

To set up a default approval process, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings. Under Automations, click Approvals.
2. Select the relevant tab that requires an approval process. (Attendance, Employee data, or Time off).
3. In the default section, click Add approval step.
4. Step one of the approval process appears. From the dropdown, select the first user you want to receive the approval task.
   • Specific employee: one specific user who must approve the request. 
   • Employee with role: any employee in the role can approve the request. Once one employee in the role approves the request, the task disappears for all others.
   • Supervisor: the primary supervisor of the affected employee, as shown in the Org chart view, must approve the request. To add multiple supervisors, see custom approvals. 
   • Supervisor's supervisor: the supervisor of the affected employee's primary supervisor must approve the request.
5. Optionally, add up to five more approval steps in the order the tasks should trigger.
6. Enable delegation: activate this option to automatically redirect requests to the approver's supervisor if they're absent. 
7. Click Save. Repeat these steps for each area that requires an approval process.

When an employee submits a request, the approval process triggers, and approvers receive a task in their Inbox. They also receive an email notification if enabled in their personal settings. 

Approvers must action the request in the order defined. See how to Manage approvals. 

Tip: To notify a Manager or Role member of an employee's time off without requiring their approval, create an automated workflow using the "Notify supervisors of a time off" template. 

Add a certificate request to a time off approval

In some cases, employees must upload a certificate for their time off, especially if it exceeds a set number of consecutive days. You can set up time off approvals to automatically request this certificate.

To add a certificate request to a time off approval process:

1. Go to Settings. Under Work Hours and Time off, select Time off.
2. Select a time off type (for example, "Sick leave"), and click the Pencil icon. Or, create a new time off type.
3. Under Certificate & Substitute, activate the Required from option next to "Certificate". Enter the number of days that triggers a certificate request. For example, if you enter "3", a certificate request triggers on the morning of the third time off day. Weekends are excluded from the count.
4. Save your changes.

If a time off request exceeds the set limit, the employee receives a certificate request. Employees with Document access rights can upload the certificate to their profile's Time off tab. See how to manage and review time off approval requests. 

Germany-based Personio customers: Employees with statutory or non-private health insurance don't need to manually upload medical certificates. Digital certificates (eAU) are automatically sent to their health insurance. You can retrieve them manually, or automatically via the DATEV integration and check their status under the relevant time off period. 

Note: Approving a time off certificate and the time off request are separate actions. They must be actioned individually. 

Check access rights for approvers

Once you set up an approval process, ensure all approvers have the correct access rights to review the required data. To check their access rights, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Approvals. Note the assigned approvers for each process.
2. Open the People list. Adjust the columns and add the Employee roles attribute to the view then save it.
3. Review the People list to check each approver and the roles that they're assigned.
4. Go to Settings > Employee roles. Ensure the relevant approver's role has access to the data they must approve. Refer to the table below for required access rights based on approval type:

See how to add employees to an employee role.

More information about approvals

• Manage approvals
• Set up custom approval processes