10 Benefits of Employee Leave Management Systems

Leave management is not too much of a bother… said no HR manager ever. The only exception to this “rule” is having just a few people on board. For everyone else, keeping track of the number of leave days, leave requests, excess leaves, payrolls, and available human resources in an Excel sheet is a puzzlement, a nightmare! Well, however, this doesn’t apply to businesses that choose to use employee leave management systems over handling all of the above-mentioned tasks by using conventional tools such as Google Forms.

Today, we’re getting into the nitty-gritty details of all the benefits a system like this can provide to all HR people, workforce staff, and supervisors out there. But first, let us break down what an employee leave management system actually stands for. 

What Is An Employee Leave Management System, Exactly?

Well, the concept is pretty much self-explanatory. Employee leave management systems are either a single tool or a suite of tools and procedures that make leave requesting and approval (yup, even when it is last-minute), or rejection, plain sailing. 

For time-off managers, this means not having to sort out leave balances, applications, and any other pending approvals, leave accounting, and year-end reports manually. Using digital leave management forms or customizable databases can improve efficiency, prevent confusion and leave conflicts, and leave more time and space for doing more important work. 

Without a system, you can easily misplace sheets, forget about leave requests, and get into trouble because of improper leave administration. If you have ever had to manage overlapping or conflicting time-off requests and ended up Al-Deskoing because of that, you already know what we are talking about here.  

Sometimes, managers tend to ignore leave requests when their team is short-staffed or in the midst of big campaigns. Other times, some of the employees will be able to take more days off than others, again, simply because they can and no one is actually tracking their leave balance.  This can make the rest of the employees feel discouraged and frustrated and affect productivity within your organization. 

So, you get the point… Using a leave management system brings numerous benefits for both HR people and employees and simplifies requesting and approving days off, maternity/paternity leaves, etc. 

What Are the Benefits of Employee Leave Management Systems? 

Paperwork Is Eliminated

The paper-based leave management system is a source of annoyance for both managers and employees. Printing and filling out leave request forms, written leave approvals or rejections is tiresome, and everyone despises dull and repetitive tasks. 

Managing requests and leave balances manually can get overwhelming and really take a toll on the mental bandwidth of HR people, especially when they’re working in growing companies where the number of employees is growing simultaneously. 

On the other hand, employee leave management systems make it easy peasy to send, approve, or reject time-off requests. With a system like this, it takes just a couple of clicks to fill in, send out, sign, and collect approvals. Yes, you can print leave requests but really don’t have to. The system collects all the data so you can finally say bye, bye to paperwork and manual processes! 

Pretty Much Everything is Automated 

Manual data entry leaves plenty of room for mistakes and overlaps. Besides having to fill out the leave form and having it sent and approved (or rejected), using an absence management system requires very little to no manual work since a great chunk of things is put on auto-pilot

Leave balance, leave history, notifications, and everything in-between is or can be auto-updated, which makes systems like these super convenient. For instance, if you (and other decision-makers in the company) want to get notified when pleas are approved, when employees have almost hit their time-off limitations, or when their request time is off, an automated leave tracking system will make you well aware of all this, instantly.

Everything Is Updated In Real-Time

Both employees and managers need the latest information when applying for or approving a leave. A leave management system prevents conflicts and potential rejections of applications when there is absolutely no reason for that. On the flip side, managers can get real-time information about how many (and if too many) leaves are approved, which can result in a lack of resources. 

It Saves Time

Eliminating all of the leave-related tedious tasks can make management teams operate more efficiently, which, ultimately, results in hours of time saved. A high level of automation and ease of use of employee leave management systems make it easy to switch focus on organizing other areas of work, such as recruiting or onboarding new people, managing the employee life cycle, etc.

A huge benefit of using a leave management system is that your employees won’t be waiting for ages to get a response, especially if they need you to take swift action and approve their time off ASAP while managers don’t have to spend hours checking on past data and leave balances every week.

It Improves Communication Within Your Organization 

Communication is one of the most crucial aspects of leave management.

Picture a leave management system as a database that makes information about the upcoming leaves and availability of other team members just a click away! 

Knowing when and who is going to away makes it much easier to organize current workloads and let everyone know what needs to be done and by when, which eliminates bottlenecks and improves communication with people on the team. Employees can also get access to the dashboard, check when other teammates will be absent and plan their own leaves accordingly while making sure that others don’t have to work extra hours to compensate for the lack of workforce. 

Increased Transparency 

The drop in productivity is often related to AWOL (absence without leave). When using a system for leave management, everything is neatly displayed and planned on a dashboard so you can easily spot productivity leaks and if some of the team members are overusing or underusing their days off. 

Using automated absence leave management systems makes it almost effortless to analyze data and generate insightful reports, too! This can help you calculate the average cost of leaves taken, see which employees are often taking unplanned leaves and how this affects the overall productivity. 

No Data Is Lost

Keeping track of your employees’ time off in an Excel sheet or any other digital offline record will almost 100% result in data loss at some point. Accessing this offline record from a single device can translate into bigger problems in case the device ends up broken, lost, or stolen.

A system for leave management keeps your data structured and safe and stored on the cloud, which eliminates any possible issues such as hardware breakdown or losing physical records. Plus, you can access it from basically any device, as long as you remember your login details. 

Legal Compliance 

Absence management has a lot to do with various guidelines, policies, and rules. If your team is scattered all around the world, you should make sure that you stay compliant with multiple legal systems and different local, state, and federal laws. 

Non-multinational companies typically do not have issues with this, but should still set leave criteria and constraints and communicate these to employees to avoid loopholes. Leave management systems can help people stay compliant with laws and make sure all of the important procedures are followed. 

Plenty of Customization Options 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to leave management. Some organizations have more rigid and more flexible policies and procedures. Using a leave management system, you’d be able to categorize leave types (sick leave, maternity/paternity leave, FMLA, etc), filter out employees that have or haven’t used casual leaves or public holidays, and approve or reject their further requests based on this information. 

Some of the best leave management systems allow integration with business tools such as Slack or Microsoft Teams so you can really be able to make time-off planning and attendance tracking completely undemanding. 

Builds a Strong and Positive Company Culture

The last but not least benefit of employee management systems is that using one of these really speaks a lot about your company’s culture and promotes core values, such as trust and transparency. 

Working in such an atmosphere gives employees a sense of bigger purpose and makes them more enthusiastic about working together on major initiatives (especially when they get back to work from a short vacay that gives them the energy to smash the goals you’ve set for them).

Summary

Being able to keep an eye on both planned and unplanned leaves and having a clear idea of how many resources are available at every moment is actually crucial for the proper functioning of your organization. 

However, using a leave management system is not only about creating organizational discipline but about personnel performance and morale, too! It’s safe to say that leave management systems provide a wide variety of benefits on top of these 10 but one thing is for sure – these systems are tools that can also help you manage risks, reduce costs, and streamline many processes in your organization. 

And, if you think that this kind of system is exactly what you need, then check out Vacation Tracker, a PTO software that can finally make it happen for your team to self-manage and provide organization-wide visibility you need to optimize resources optimally, even when some of your employees are taking a leave.

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