Ideal Leave Management Systems & Workflows – A Complete Guide
Every company needs to have an effective leave management system in place to make it simple for employees to manage time-off requests like vacation days and sick leave.
Workflows can then run smoothly and seamlessly.
Without a good leave management system, you could find that your business often has an employee shortfall and you are always needing to offer workers overtime at the last minute to take the place of absent employees.
In fact, all kinds of problems can arise when you do not have ideal leave management systems and workflows.
The Problem with Traditional Leave Management Processes
In the old days, leave management systems typically involved this scenario: employees would submit physical leave request forms, managers would then approve them, the HR department would then be notified for payroll purposes, and the leave requests would be logged in the specific employees’ records.
In fact, many companies still use this process.
While there is nothing exactly wrong with this approach, it does take a lot of time and problems can arise.
For instance, when an employee plans to take a two-week vacation and either the manager or the HR department fails to correctly process the leave form, or even misplaces it, workflows will be majorly affected.
The employee who had planned to take off time may not be able to do so, or you may have to find last-minute cover for the absent employee. Either way, that is not a good situation to be in.
Utilizing Modern Leave Management Systems
You can avoid problems by ensuring your leave management system always runs effectively, but it can be challenging to do that with traditional approaches.
When you use a leave application form template via a web app or mobile app, leave requests can be managed much more effectively.
Each step of the leave management process can enable your company to ensure it always has sufficient staffing.
Better yet, the best digital leave application form templates come with many other useful features to ensure your workflows are never interrupted by confusion surrounding employee time off.
For instance, you can ensure all employees take the correct amount of time off each year to comply with labor laws, you can get insights into absence trends, and both employees and managers can easily and accurately see who has time off and when.
Employees simply access your digital leave management system and select the dates for which they want to request leave.
They can see if certain days are available. They can also note the reason for the absence, such as sick leave or vacation.
If the employees are letting managers know that they are on leave due to sickness, they can easily add notes and attach medical documentation.
Then, the employees simply hit a button to send off their leave requests for approval.
Once managers have approved the requests, employees can be immediately notified.
Those who are approving or denying requests can receive the employee leave requests by channels like email or Slack so that they can approve or deny leave requests quickly.
And speaking of Slack, you might be interested in these Slack tips for teams working remotely.
The Benefits of Using Digital Leave Request Forms
Apart from the process of requesting and approving leave requests being easier when you utilize digital forms rather than using a physical process and the fact that requests and approvals can be made very quickly, there are numerous other benefits of using digital leave request forms.
For instance, leave requests can be submitted and approved from anywhere at any time.
Also, it is simple to make changes to the forms after requests have been submitted.
Furthermore, your team has access to all the information they need on one screen, making it easier for them to make plans and for managers to not lose track of pending requests.
