Top 7 Benefits of a Leave Management System

In our earlier posts in the Leave Management Series, we discussed the role of employee leave in supporting a healthy work-life balance and the different ways you can encourage employees to take time off throughout the year. This last post of the series outlines how a leave management system can help you efficiently track employee leave and set parameters for requesting, approving and encouraging employee time off.

How a Leave Management System Delivers Value

When you consider the role of time off in managing employee burnout and achieving a healthy work-life balance, it makes sense to implement a leave management system that manages employee absences with complete visibility and accuracy.

Being unable to effectively track employee leave not only puts your business operations in disarray, but also negatively impacts your organization’s bottom line. According to the CDC Foundation, productivity losses linked to absenteeism cost employers $225.8 billion each year, or $1,685 per employee.

HR professionals who have experienced the headache of trying to manually track employee leave balances and accruals understand the importance of automated solutions. By implementing modern software to manage employee absences instead of antiquated paper- or spreadsheet-based systems, you can realize the following benefits:

1. Elimination of Manual, Paper-Based Processes
Leave management software automates the core functions of employee absence management and offers more functionality than you can achieve with spreadsheets and legacy time and attendance systems. Managers, employees, and HR have access to a central portal for all time and attendance activities. Because time off requests and reporting happen in the cloud, you can say goodbye to manual absence tracking for good.

2. Real-Time Leave Monitoring
A leave management system gives you complete access to all employee leave data, including accruals, leave balances, and information about special cases, such as when employees borrow against future accruals.

Furthermore, real-time access to employee leave data allows you to see who is approaching their leave limit, and who has not taken any leave and may need encouragement to take time off. And with full visibility into which employees have time off scheduled in the future, you can take steps to arrange shift coverage and temporary staff replacements.

3. Compliance with Regulatory Leave Requirements and Collective Bargaining agreements
Managing your workforce requires keeping track of both applicable leave laws and obligations under any established collective bargaining agreements. A leave management system allows you to manage leave for all employees, whether they are hourly or salaried, unionized and sworking under a collective bargaining agreement, or working in multiple locations.

4. Alignment of Leave Requests with Organizational Policies
With a robust leave management system, you don’t have to manually keep track of carryover rules and policies for leave exceptions. Instead, you can embed your leave policy requirements into the software. As a result, managers don’t have to worry about approving requests that fall outside of the policy, and you don’t have to wonder if accruals have been applied properly.

5. Automated Notifications for More Efficient Leave Management
Customizable notifications let you know when employees submit time off requests, when requests are approved, and when employees are approaching time off limits. You can also configure the software to remind managers when an outstanding request requires their attention. Instead of requests slipping through the cracks or sitting too long without a response, you can resolve requests and take quick action when there are exceptions in need of immediate attention.

6. Enhanced Capability of Workforce Management Systems
Through seamless integrations with an existing payroll, enterprise resource planning, or human capital management system, you can ensure employee leave data syncs with other critical areas of workforce management. For example, instead of completing manual payroll calculations, you can have your leave data flow automatically to your payroll system for more accurate statements each pay period.

7. Improved Communication Between Managers and Employees
When employees have an easy-to-use portal for requesting time off and seeing their balances, they don’t have to worry about tracking down their manager to request time off. In addition, with leave bidding tools and the ability to put requests on standby, managers can enjoy a stress-free process for managing future planned leave requests. Managers also have access to historical time off data for their team, so they can easily see who is taking time off—and who isn’t. With this data, managers can speak individually with employees about using their available time off and avoiding burnout.

Manage Employee Absences with Ease

Keeping track of employee absences, accruals, and leave balances doesn’t require manual calculations or a mass of spreadsheets. Instead, today’s leave management technology automates core functions and puts more data in your hands, so you know who is and isn’t working and where you need replacements. To see what your leave management system can do for you, contact us for a live demo of TCP’s best-in-class leave management solutions.