How we built this: Manager Dashboard
How and why we built a tailored view just for managers for better visibility into key details, while still keeping it simple.
January 22, 2025
Nikki Henderson
Writer
With the holidays now behind us, there’s still one more gift for you: we’re unveiling the highly requested Manager Dashboard to give managers better visibility into key leave details for their employees. We spoke with Product Designer, Estell Kim, and Product Manager, Sean Miller to learn more about what this feature does, why we built it, and how it helps both our customers and our platform continue to evolve and improve the way leave gets managed.
What is the Manager Dashboard?
The Manager Dashboard is a focused view just for managers offering key details about their direct reports’ leaves, including: leave type, dates, status, and a list of past, present, and upcoming leaves. They’ll also have easy access to resources to help them better support employees through a leave. People Ops teams benefit from this view too—you won’t have to be in the middle answering questions about essential leave details.
From a design perspective, we wanted it to reflect the overall ease of using Cocoon with everything where you expect and need it to be. We also wanted to ensure privacy and control, so managers can only see certain details, and only for their employees. Admins can toggle manager access on or off and track who’s logged in to keep tabs on accounts and usage.
Leave is a team sport that goes beyond HR and a leave-taker. In offering managers more resources in Cocoon that are easy to access, we can help them focus their time and energy toward supporting a leave-taker.”
Why we built the Manager Dashboard
This feature was born straight out of customer feedback and research led by our Product team. “Admins told us that, on the one hand, managers needed more than reminder emails from Cocoon, and that having People Ops in the middle for certain questions was slowing everybody down. But on the other hand, they didn’t want to give managers too much information or something that required a lot of training,” Estell explains.
“Our solution was to develop a Manager Dashboard by leveraging census data to establish a relationship between managers and their direct reports, providing enhanced visibility and greater autonomy,” Sean adds. “Managers can plan effectively before, during, and after an employee’s leave with this self-serve option that has just the right amount of detail.”
“We also wanted to address the patchwork of solutions that non-Cocoon customers rely on today—emails, spreadsheets, too many meetings, and generally scattered processes,” Estell says. “With this additional dashboard, we’re offering an even more seamless, out-of-the-box solution that reduces manual effort and improves communication across the board for seasoned Cocoon customers or those just getting started.”
How does the Manager Dashboard work?
“We prioritize evolving alongside our customers, adapting to their needs, and simplifying things for them,” Sean proudly proclaims. “The Manager Dashboard is straightforward to use, and reduces friction for both managers and People Teams by removing Cocoon Admins as a bottleneck to get key info on employees’ leaves .” Here’s how it works:
When managers log in, they’ll see a focused Leaves tab in the left sidebar. This tab will show them:
- A list of employees with any past, present, and upcoming leaves
- Leave type, leave dates, and leave status
- A link at the top with tips and templates for managers supporting an employee and team through a leave.
From here, they can click on any employee’s name to dive deeper into leave details like:
- Leave timeline details
- The laws or policies that cover each segment
- If their leave is paid, and from which sources
For Workspace Admins
Workspace Admins are the folks who manage your organization’s use of and access to Cocoon. They have the ability to invite and activate managers and new employees who will use Cocoon—so make sure they’re aware of this update!
- When you integrate your HRIS or provide us with census data, Cocoon automatically matches managers to their direct reports, so you don’t have to do this manually.
- In the Settings menu, you can see which managers have created an account, confirm their teammates are properly assigned, and turn manager account access on or off.
Today’s launch, tomorrow’s improvements
“Leave is a team sport that goes beyond HR and a leave-taker,” Estell says. “In offering managers more resources in Cocoon that are easy to access, we can help them focus their time and energy toward supporting a leave-taker.”
“I’m excited about this launch because it’s part of a larger, ongoing effort to truly tailor the Cocoon experience to all the different roles and functions that may touch a leave, giving them the information they need when they need it,” Sean says. “Looking to the future, this work will help us to continue to improve efficiency, flexibility, and transparency as your organization grows, and as Cocoon grows, too.”
In short, at Cocoon, we’re excited to keep improving the leave management process for everyone who’s a part of the journey. To keep doing just that, in 2025, we’re planning to launch roles in Cocoon for HR business partners—so stay tuned!
