Company Events & Announcements — a manager's guide

Company Events lets HR and designated managers send targeted announcements and set up events — to the whole company, to specific departments, or to named people. Recipients are notified in chat, get a calendar entry, and (for events) can RSVP. Best of all, attendance at a company event can be made to count as paid work time, so nobody is penalised for stepping away from their desk to be there.

The big picture

Two things you can send

• Announcement — a one-way notice (e.g. "Office closed Friday"). No RSVP, no start/end time. It simply broadcasts to the audience you choose.
• Event — has a date, time and venue. People RSVP, and you can optionally have attendance count as work time.

Who can create them

• HR (the Event Admin permission) — can create anything and target any audience: the whole company, any department, or any individuals. HR also sees the birthdays panel.
• Selected managers (the Event Create permission) — can create events, but only for their own departments and the people in them.
• Everyone else simply receives the events they're invited to and RSVPs — no special permission needed.

Your system administrator grants Event Admin / Event Create by assigning the right role.

Where to set one up

People → Human Resources → Company Events → New event / announcement.

In the dialog you choose the kind (Event or Announcement), write the title and message, and pick the audience (whole company, one or more departments, and/or specific people). For an event you also set the start / end time, venue, an optional RSVP deadline, and the "Credit work time" switch (see below).

• Save keeps it as a draft — nobody is notified yet.
• Publish sends it out.

What happens when you publish

• Everyone in the audience gets a chat notification and a calendar entry on their dashboard.
• Reminders send automatically 24 hours and 1 hour before the event starts.
• Invitees RSVP — attending or not attending.

You can still edit a published event (a time or venue change re-notifies everyone), and you can cancel it at any time.

Seeing it at a glance — the dashboard panel

Recipients don't have to go looking. When someone has something event-related waiting, a small Events panel appears in the top-right of their dashboard ("My Day" tab), next to "Needs your attention." It shows, at a glance:

• how many RSVPs they still owe,
• their next upcoming event (with a link to open it),
• how many new announcements arrived recently, and
• (for HR only) today's birthdays.

They can dismiss the panel with the ✕ — it then stays hidden until something new comes along (a new event or announcement, or a changed RSVP), so it's a nudge, not a nag. The full list is always on the My Events page (People → My Events), and events also appear on their personal calendar on the dashboard.

How attendance counts toward work time

This is the part that matters most for managers, and it's shown in the lower half of the diagram above.

It applies only to events where you switched on "Credit work time." The flow is:

1. After the event, open it and confirm the attendance register — tick who actually attended. Confirming the register is the trigger. An RSVP on its own credits nothing — it just tells you who intended to come.
2. For each person you mark attended, the system credits the part of the event that fell inside that person's normal working shift, minus any time they were already clocked in.

That credited time then behaves like this:

• ✅ Counts as paid worked time for the day.
• ✅ No "absent / left early / short day" warning for the time they were at the event — they aren't penalised for being there.
• ❌ Never becomes overtime. A normal week stays a normal week; the credit only makes up in-shift time, it never inflates hours.

A few boundaries worth knowing:

• Time outside someone's shift — an after-hours function, a Saturday social — is social time, not paid. Only the overlap with their normal shift counts.
• Already-paid (payroll-locked) weeks can't be changed. If you try to confirm a register for a week that's already been locked for payroll, you'll get a clear message telling you to contact HR rather than a silent failure.
• Cancelling reverses it. If you cancel an event after confirming its register, the credited time is removed again.

Birthdays (HR only)

The Company Events page shows HR a "today and the next 7 days" birthday list — name and photo only, never the age or year of birth. It's there so HR can organise a card or a cake. It is not visible to other staff.

Step-by-step: run an event that counts as work time

1. People → Human Resources → Company Events → New event.
2. Choose Event; set the title, date/time and venue.
3. Turn "Credit work time" on.
4. Pick the audience (company / departments / people).
5. Publish — everyone is notified and will be reminded.
6. On or after the day, open the event, tick who attended, and Confirm register.
7. Done — their attendance is credited automatically. You can check it against their hours if you wish.

Good to know

• Reach for an Announcement when it's just a notice nobody needs to reply to.
• Managers only see and target their own departments; HR can target the whole company.
• Leave "Credit work time" off for optional / social events you don't want to pay for.