Every business needs to offer employees time off in an efficient and competitive way, or else face dissatisfaction, high turnover rates and issues with regulatory compliance.
Of course there are a few ways to go about this, with lots of smaller firms choosing to manually track leave requests.
Thankfully there are comprehensive management systems dedicated to streamlining this process, so should you pull the trigger and adopt one, or stick to a more traditional approach?
Automation is your friend
Without a doubt the biggest benefit of a leave management system is the inclusion of an annual leave tracker which automates the otherwise time-consuming task of keeping tabs on all of the info relating to employee time off. A tool used by employers to manage employee vacation time and schedules. It helps to streamline the process of requesting, approving, and tracking employee time off. With a vacation tracker, employees can easily submit vacation requests, which are then automatically routed to their supervisor or manager for approval. The tool also enables managers to track how much vacation time employees have accrued and how much they have used, ensuring that vacation policies are being followed and that employees are taking the time off they are entitled to.
Prior to the availability of such solutions, you would be forced to update sprawling spreadsheets with requests by hand, and use imperfect methods to check whether or not a particular individual?s leave could be approved.
By switching to a fully fledged leave management system, all of these inefficiencies are eliminated, and you can enjoy a faster, more accurate means of wrangling what can otherwise be a complex procedure.
Scalability is appealing
As well as enabling the automation of many leave-related duties, fully fledged management systems are made to scale as your organization grows and its needs change.
The aforementioned spreadsheet sprawl which would stifle your administrative abilities in the past can be rendered entirely unnecessary. Instead, a modern management platform will grow with your organization, accommodating new team members as needed and keeping the wheels of your operations well-greased throughout the seasons of the year.
Visibility is assured
Another downside of old-school solutions for organizing your allocation of employee leave is that this tends to prevent you from quickly assessing who is supposed to be away on a given day.
Scouring columns and rows of a spreadsheet is hardly the speediest way to visualize what is going on throughout the week so you can plan accordingly.
As you might expect, leave management systems have got this covered. Getting an overview of absences is a breeze, and you will be able to do this whether you are at the office or on the move thanks to the mobility features of modern platforms.
Updates can be made on-the-fly
Leave management is a very fluid, dynamic process, so it pays to have a platform for handling it which is just as capable of change and adaptability.
Whenever employees need to make leave requests, this can be dealt with immediately through a digital platform. This is both more effective and more efficient, as well as being simply more convenient for all involved.
On-the-fly updates like this remove the ambiguity and potential for confusion from the process. You can even implement automated approval for certain types of leave requests, which removes even more admin from your plate from day to day.
Overarching analytics enables informed decision-making
With a leave management system on your side, all sorts of important and actionable metrics will be monitored, tracked and recorded over time.
This is an excellent way of looking into who has the most time off, the reasons behind their decision to take leave, and even the teams that are most susceptible to this type of behavior.
In short, if you want to manage employees more effectively and make decisions based on hard data rather than gut feelings, you need a leave management system on your side.
It is definitely a worthwhile investment for all organizations, from small businesses with compact workforces to large corporations with hundreds of people to manage simultaneously.