Top 4 Leave Management Challenges
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If you don’t work in HR, you might be asking yourself: what kind of leave management challenges do employers face in 2020? Shouldn’t this sort of thing be automated by now?
That’s a great question. Unfortunately, when it comes to leave management, too many organizations are still stuck in the past. Maybe you were even one of these poor souls who had to fill out their winter holiday request via an Excel spreadsheet.
Don’t worry. You are not alone.
There are excellent tools out there to make sure that you start the new decade off on the right foot. 2020 will be the year that your organization resolves its leave management challenges. We believe in you, and in your HR department!
Every Human Resources manager’s mantra is that employees are a company’s most valuable assets. It really shows when companies walk the talk. Organizations that put their employees first offer good benefits and sufficient time off. They know that to deliver their best work, team members also need to take vacations, have access to sick days, and other types of leaves.
Yet, tracking these different types of leaves can prove time-consuming and complicated. It’s important for teams and employers to have a transparent and clear process to apply company policy in a fair and seamless way.
Some of the main leave management challenges faced by HR departments are listed below. These challenges exist across industries. Nevertheless, a simple, customizable solution is out there. A solution fit to serve a budding start-up or a large corporate team. For every one of these leave management challenges, there is a solution.
Transparent Leave Policy
We can’t discuss leave management challenges without first talking about leave policy. There needs to be a transparent leave policy in place before any vacations or leaves can be booked. Employees need to be familiarized with this policy when they enter an organization. Employees must also always know which holidays are observed by your organization. This might vary by country, region, religion, industry, etc. A clear and transparent policy must detail the allowance for every type of leave available to your team members.
A policy needs to be in place to ensure that everyone in an organization is treated fairly. Policies also need to be in line with the laws of the region, province, country, and/or territory.
Employee Uncertainty About Leave Allowances and Policies
Of course, having a transparent leave policy in place can solve some of your leave management challenges. However, the policy simply existing is not enough. It needs to be communicated and reiterated to your teams.
Ideally, your employees could have a way to easily interact with their leave policy information.
To know if there is uncertainty on your team about leave allowances and policies, you can ask the following questions:
Does the average employee know how many vacation days they have left?
Do your teams know whether or not their vacation time accrues?
Do they know how many sick days they have in total for the year or remaining?
And do they know what type of leave they have the right to take for bereavement, or a celebratory life event such as the birth of a child or a wedding?
If team members are not able to quickly answer these questions, you have a leave management challenge on your hands. Your HR team needs to keep employees updated on policies, accrued time, and remaining days off.
Keep Team Members Informed with Vacation Tracker
Luckily, a solution is right within reach.
With Vacation Tracker, any active user can see their leave status at any time.
They can do so directly through Slack, by entering the “/vacation” slash command and selecting the “My status” option. Otherwise, they can also see their leave balance on their profile through the Vacation Tracker dashboard.
Tracking Leave
Even once a proper policy is in place and properly communicated, there remain a couple more leave management challenges.
Firstly, simply tracking leave seems to be a challenge. Many organizations are still stuck in the past. It’s jarring how many organizations still track leave using Excel spreadsheets.
In an Excel spreadsheet, someone is updating the information manually. When information gets entered incorrectly, this incorrect information can impact the payroll. It can also affect the remaining vacation balances of employees.
A leave tracking system can prevent manual entry errors, while also keeping teams updated on upcoming leaves in the organization.
With Vacation Tracker, your Administrators can program up to 25 fully customizable Leave Types. Employees can request any type of leave in just a few clicks. On the Administrator Dashboard, Admins can track everything in real-time. Teams can receive tailored Notifications about current or upcoming absences.
Payroll Errors and Reporting
The last and perhaps most relevant of the leave management challenges is reporting. Absences and leaves will affect payroll. Organizations have paid as well as unpaid leaves. Of course, company policies should indicate this.
However, with a proper automated HR solution, it should be easy to both accurately track, and export reports.
Try the reports provided by Vacation Tracker. You get access to all of the features when you sign up for the free 7-day trial.
Kristina Ousmanova
Kristina recently left behind fast-paced life of Human Resource Business Consulting to freelance as a Content Writer. A regular Vacation Tracker contributor, she can be found working remotely from her home in Montreal, usually while eating a variety of snacks.
