Headquartered in Harris County, Texas, Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (ISD) employs more than 15,000 people across the county. HR Coordinator Annette Jimenez is just one of the three HR Coordinators tasked with managing all the leave requests that come in. Jimenez has worked at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD for ten years and has been managing leave for the past five and a half years.
In years past, she would spend countless hours flipping through paperwork to try to calculate leave entitlements when employees requested leave under the ADA, FMLA, and school policies. Not only was this an inefficient use of her time, it was also easy to make a mistake, because laws and policies can have complex eligibilities.
After the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD implemented AbsenceSoft two years ago, Jimenez’s leave management process completely transformed.
“Whether it’s your FMLA or your temporary disability entitlements, AbsenceSoft has been a huge time saver because we can automatically push data in and AbsenceSoft will do the calculations for us.” Jimenez said.
To help make her case for AbsenceSoft, Jimenez once timed how long it took to prepare a single leave case. Back then, she had a good process, but no way to automate any part of it. She had to do everything by hand.
Any time a request came in, Jimenez said “it took me 15 mins and 54 seconds just to start the leave process.”
With AbsenceSoft, she can now open a leave case in just a few clicks. In 2023, Jimenez estimated that Cypress-Fairbanks ISD received about 2,000 leave requests. During that year, AbsenceSoft saved her team an astonishing amount of time: 530 hours or just over 13 work weeks! This was valuable time that her team spent supporting their colleagues and attending to other, more critical HR issues.
Emergency closures are another ongoing challenge for leave management in K-12 school districts. Closures impact employee eligibility and pay, and they are often decided at the last minute.
“We have had one closure this year and AbsenceSoft has made it more efficient to alter entitlements because we can change our calendar on the fly, and it will automatically adjust entitlements for our employees that are impacted,” Jimenez said.
“Without AbsenceSoft I would have had to sort through 450 cases to figure out who we had stopped paying and whose payments stopped just after this date so I have to reimburse them a day. For emergency closure recalculations AbsenceSoft has saved me somewhere between 6-8 hours of going through paperwork just to find which ones needed to be adjusted.”
AbsenceSoft has done more than just saved Jimenez and her team time. The platform gave them access to leave program data that has improved their day-to-day case management. With AbsenceSoft Insights, Jimenez and team can review data regularly to stay ahead of issues and ensure efficient case management.
“We found out 60% of our leave requests come from just three departments,” recalled Jimenez. “This data has allowed us to re-evaluate how we distribute our caseloads, so they are evenly assigned to our three case managers.”
When Cypress-Fairbanks ISD implemented AbsenceSoft, they chose to include the employee self-service feature to improve the employee experience. This has been a game-changer for Jimenez, her team, and the employees in the school district. Employees can submit a leave request from any device, any time of day they need to. They can login to track their statuses, approvals, and documentation in real-time—and without needing to contact HR.
“Employees don’t have to wait until Monday morning to initiate a request,” said Jimenez. “They can do this on a Sunday or a Saturday, they can do it in the middle of the night. It gives them a great sense of comfort because on Monday morning they have an answer from us already.”
Jimenez also noted that “self-service takes out the middleman of an inexperienced manager. The employee’s manager can just direct them to the self-service portal.”
AbsenceSoft’s note-taking functionality also helps Jimenez, and her team deliver a high-quality employee experience. With AbsenceSoft, all of the case information is captured in a centralized location. Because everyone is using a common system, it does not matter which leave manager works on an employee’s case. Every leave manager will always be able to quickly reference what is happening for any case.
“Our employees feel heard, they don’t have to repeat themselves. They feel like they are being listened to and that the process is helpful and not a waste of their time,” recalled Jimenez.
AbsenceSoft not only streamlined HR operations but also improved compliance and their team’s overall efficiency. AbsenceSoft has become an indispensable tool, elevating the overall leave experience for everyone at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD. To learn how AbsenceSoft can help you streamline and automate your leave program, schedule a demo today.