In Personio, employees can log work hours or request time off anytime, even if their approver is absent. To manage requests when an approver is absent, the delegate approvals feature is often used. This is available for time-sensitive requests, like working hours or absence requests. It does not apply to changes in employee data. Additional management options are mentioned below.

Options to manage requests when the approver is absent

There are three options to manage requests during an approver's absence: 

• Delegate approvals and send requests to the approver's supervisor.
• Create a temporary approver and choose another employee (other than the approver's supervisor) to approve requests.
• Manual approval by an Administrator.

Delegate approvals

You can use the approval delegation feature if you:

• track your employees' absences in Personio.
• track your employees' working time in Personio.
• have set up approval workflows through Settings > Approvals.

To enable approval delegation, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Approvals and select the relevant absence or attendance tab.
2. Go to the Delegate approvals section and select the Enable Delegation checkbox. 
3. Save the changes.

If the primary approver is absent, approval requests redirect to their supervisor's Inbox. Any requests the supervisor does not action will disappear from their Inbox once the primary approver returns. 

Note
Employees set as substitutes for an absent approver don't receive approval delegations. Also, the Delegate approvals feature doesn't include the Remote Work absence type.

Create a temporary approver

You can use employee roles to create a temporary approver other than a supervisor. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Employee Roles and click Create new role.
2. Name the role and assign the temporary approvers to it.
3. Assign the role the necessary access rights to manage approvals.
4. Create an employee filter that includes the employees whose requests the substitute will manage. 
5. Assign the temporary approver role as the approver for the relevant steps. Repeat these steps for different request types. 
6. When the supervisor returns, go to Settings > Approvals to revert the changes. Click Manage employee filters and delete the employee filters created for the temporary approver.

Tip
When the primary approver requests their absence, they should choose the temporary approver as a substitute. This ensures the temporary approver receives a substitution request. It can act as a reminder about upcoming absence requests that may need their attention.

Manually approve requests as an Administrator

For urgent cases, Administrators can manually approve requests by following these steps:

1. Go to Automations > Approval requests.
2. Click View all approvals to see a list of open approval requests.
3. Find the request that needs to be action, and the assigned employee in the approver column.
4. Log in as the employee assigned as approver and manage the request.

Note
Only use this option for urgent cases. This helps avoid disrupting internal team workflows, arrangements, and responsibilities.

For more information about the Automations area, visit this Help Center article.