Lack of proper leave management can cause several problems for companies. It can result in understaffed teams during critical periods, increase the risk of leave abuse by employees and potentially lead to legal issues around leave entitlement.
Good leave management ensures everyone is aware of the company’s leave policies, maintains accurate record keeping and allows strategic planning to ensure continued productivity. It also allows easy coordination with payroll.
In this article, we explore how companies can improve their leave management systems to ensure accuracy, fairness and legality. This includes making use of leave management software.
Set Out Clear Leave Policies
Before you decide which leave management system you want to use, you need to have clear leave policies for your company.
This is a common challenge for growing businesses. When they are small, they’ll have loose in-word only leave policies. But as you grow and the number of employees increase, you need clear policies that are written down.
Your specific leave policies will depend on legal requirements, industry standards and your company’s goals and needs. They should cover all aspects of leave entitlement including:
How PTO is calculated.
What is not included in PTO such as holidays.
Different types of paid and unpaid leave.
How unpaid leave time is deducted from their paycheck.
Leave balance carryover.
Leave approval workflow (more below ↓)
These leave policies should be easily accessible to all employees via a handbook, a central portal or some other option.
It’s also a good idea to get feedback from employees regarding the new policies before they go into effect. It’s a good way to find out which parts of the policy need to be adjusted, if you’ve left anything out and what needs clarifying.
Define a Leave Approval Workflow
As part of your leave policies, you should specify the proper approval workflow. This eliminates confusion about who employees should go to when requesting leave. It also prevents friction between managers and HR.
Include how far in advance an approval must get to a specific person to ensure they have enough time to assess and approve the request. Additionally, put time limits on how long one person can take to approve or deny a request. This prevents delays and holdups in the workflow.
Use Leave Management Software
If you are still relying on Excel sheets to track employee leave or, worse, doing it on pen and paper, it’s time to upgrade your system.
Leave management software has several benefits:
It significantly reduces the amount of valuable time and resources spent manually tracking and coordinating employee leave.
It ensures accuracy in record keeping. No more confusion or arguments about leave days taken or leave balance.
It automates the approval workflow. Most leave management systems let you configure a custom workflow. It will then automatically forward a leave request to the right person.
Provides better oversight over leave management by HR, managers or executives.
Easy integration with other departments such as payroll. This is important in cases of unpaid leave.
Allows strategic leave planning and coordination to ensure all teams keep running smoothly even in the absence of some employees.
It’s easier to set different types of leave and the policies associated with them.
Allow Your Leave Policies to Evolve
Your leave policies shouldn’t be set in stone. A change in legal requirements, business goals or business size may necessitate a change in certain aspects of leave entitlement.
So keep checking whether your leave policies are still fit for your company. And if you make any changes, communicate them to employees ahead of time.
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