This session was presented at BLUEPRINT 4D 2026.

Many state governments are now requiring all employees to have a basic level of benefits. At Samaritan’s Purse we are using PeopleSoft’s Absence Management to address these requirements. Our regular full-time employees have standard benefit plans, but these plans did not account for our temporary and seasonal employees. We needed to address this gap so that HR could transition from manually tracking to automated tracking. Our resolution to automating our temporary employees was to create a new Special Absence plan within our PeopleSoft Absence Management module. This presentation will review challenges with both: 1) the requirements we faced, and 2) their configuration within the Absence Management module. See how we: •Addressed the complexities of states having different regulations •Handled a workforce that moves regularly in and out of those different states •Made our system available to those who needed to use it Adding a Special State plan to our Absence Management module allowed us to build on existing functionality and keep our absence plans centered within one area. We used modified Accumulators for lifetime tracking as well as Termination tracking. We setup Arrays to track approved working hours, retro payroll adjustments, and rehire options. We used Brackets to identify Earning Codes and Time Reporting Codes. We were able to accomplish our goals through configuration.


This session is eligible for the following CPE Credit: NASBA, SHRM

Speaker: Robert Usher, Samaritan’s Purse