Employee Self Service overview
What the Employee Self Service portal is for, who uses it, and how it connects to HR, payroll and expenses.
What Employee Self Service is for
Employee Self Service (ESS) is the portal where every employee handles their own working life: checking in, seeing tasks, applying for leave, claiming expenses, logging time, reading payslips and asking HR for letters or changes. Line managers use the same portal to see their team and decide what is waiting for them. HR uses it to set up the rules behind it.
Who uses it
- Employees see only their own data and pay. Nothing in the portal lets one employee open another's records.
- Line managers see only their own team: the people who report to them, plus anyone whose leave has been delegated to them.
- HR and payroll staff hold the setup permission to maintain shifts, policies, workflows, country rules and the monthly payslip run, and they decide the HR steps of requests.
- Finance decides the finance steps, such as loans and bank changes, and settles expense claims.
Your sign-in must be linked to an employee record. If it is not, every page says 'Your sign-in is not linked to an employee in this company. Ask HR to link it (Identity -> Users -> Employee).'
Key ideas
- One request workflow. Most things you ask for, such as overtime, a loan, a letter, an air ticket or a bank change, are requests. A request moves through approval steps (Manager review, HR review, Finance review) set by HR for that type. The request page shows a timeline of who decided what.
- Nobody approves their own work. The system refuses a decision on your own request: 'You cannot decide your own request.' Leave, expense claims and profile changes have the same rule with their own messages.
- Leave, expenses, profile changes and document renewals open their own pages but still show in My Requests.
- Attendance days. Check-ins, breaks and check-outs build a daily record with worked time, late minutes and overtime, using the employee's shift and attendance policy. A correction adds a punch; it never edits the original.
- Company switches. The administrator can turn off Leave, Attendance and timesheets, or Expenses for the portal, and hide or require some fields.
What is in the menu
Top menu: Home, Attendance, Leave, Requests, Payroll, a Manager group (My Team, Team Attendance, Leave Approvals, Attendance Corrections, Overtime Approvals, Timesheet Approvals, Probation Reviews, Team Documents, Team Calendar) and a Configuration group (All Approvals, Self-service setup). Tasks, Documents, Employment, Benefits, Expenses, Timesheets, Learning, Assets, Letters & Certificates and My Profile are in the left menu of the portal.
How it connects to other modules
| Module | Connection |
|---|---|
| HR | Employee records, contracts, leave types and balances, attendance days, documents and probation. Approved requests update HR. |
| Expenses | Claims raised in the portal go through the Expenses engine and its approvers. |
| Payroll | The portal shows published payslips, loans and advances, WPS status and social insurance. |
| Projects | Tasks and timesheet lines carry a project name. |
Next: Get started.