Zoll: Centralising absence for a global organisation

Zoll first approached edays in 2016 looking to find the perfect absence management system for their UK branch. Fast forward to 2021 and they have expanded their edays system to 8 different countries to alleviate their absence headaches, centralizing their absence management processes across EMEA.

Zoll is a medical manufacturer that develops and markets medical devices and software solutions across the globe. As with many businesses that have a global reach, they have office locations in various countries, each with its own unique absence rules. Before edays, each of these branches was managing and tracking absence through various methods. In the Netherlands, employees had to fill out paper holiday forms to send to their managers and HR via email. This caused various issues with the holiday approval process as if these emails were not read and approved within two weeks, employees within Zoll were entitled to take the requested holiday without approval.

In multiple other countries such as Belgium and Germany, they used Excel spreadsheets to track and monitor absence. However, maintaining a different spreadsheet for each country became a very manual and time-consuming process that was not always 100% accurate. This issue was only heightened when employment law in Spain and Italy made it mandatory for their branches based there to record working times, putting more pressure on the spreadsheet-based system.

None of Zoll’s previous methods for managing absence were suitable for a growing global business. There was a lack of global visibility which made it difficult for their HR team to report on absence, leaving them constantly being chased by employees for information such as remaining entitlement. Managers were also unable to easily see, track and approve holiday requests which led to delays in approval time and made it difficult to see who from their team was in and out of the office.

Zoll then decided to face these challenges and started looking into solutions that could alleviate their absence headaches and centralize their processes. Ironically, the solution to their problems was already on their doorstep. Their UK branch was already using edays and found that it could cater to their needs. After receiving great feedback from their UK colleagues, the rest of Zoll’s EMEA branches began to look at adopting edays too. 

This was because Zoll felt that edays’ capability to manage absence globally, ease of use, and reporting functionality set it apart from other platforms on the market. edays and Zoll then began working together and identified three project drivers: 

• The first was to implement a system with global capability that would allow them to remain compliant with all the local holiday rules and regulations across their EMEA locations.   
• The second was to introduce a system that would make dealing with holiday requests easier. Providing a clearly outlined holiday approval flow and allowing managers/HR to view and approve holiday requests easily. 
• The third and final project driver was to utilize a system that produces real-time absence reports so HR could instantly have the absence information they needed, right at their fingertips. 

edays has been well received by Zoll due to its ability to make managing absence internationally easy and overall simplicity. Users can now submit holiday requests from anywhere, on any device, using the online platform and authorizers are no longer the middleman when it comes to holiday, they can instantly approve or reject holiday requests at the click of a button. HR no longer shoulders the weight of their absence by themselves as all their employees are now empowered when it comes to absence. Zoll’s HR team is now confident that employees would no longer need to chase them for information such as remaining holiday entitlement and that they could send reminders to managers to approve holiday requests easily. Overall, their absence management processes have become more streamlined and efficient.

The impact of edays within Zoll is clear to see through its growth within their organization, what started as a system used only within the UK has grown to cover all their EMEA locations. Zoll is now able to cater to each country’s individual absence rules, ensuring local regulations are being followed. This has been particularly useful for their Spain and Italy branches where they have introduced edays time submission module to record working times as per the local employment laws. Visibility of absence within their organization has also increased by introducing one centralized system for managing absence with clear holiday approval flows and real-time reports.