Managing employee leaves or time off is a crucial activity for the HR management of every company. No matter whether it is a small company or an established one, this is something that needs to be handled very carefully. Nowadays, you can easily do this by using an Employee’s leave tracking app, like Day off. But before investing in such apps or tools, it will be better for you to understand leave-tracking or management and why it is important for a business. Let’s discuss this in detail.
What do you mean by leave?
To earn a salary, an employee doesn’t need to work all day. In simple words, leaves are like off work days, apart from the holidays that employees deserve, as per a leave policy. If you look back around hundred years ago, employees were not given the privilege to take a paid leave. But now, almost all the countries ask the HR managers or management to provide their employees with paid leave as well as paid holidays. In fact, in the United States of America, more than 95 percent of companies offer paid leaves to their employees.
PTO- Paid time off or leave is a preferred benefit after the healthcare coverage. There are different types of leaves an employee can enjoy. It is the state government’s law that forms different leaves and how many leaves a company can grant per year. While there are earned leaves, in some cases, employees can carry forward the leave balance to the next year.
However, when it comes to managing and tacking the leaves, most companies are now facing a lot of issues. After all, tracking the leaves of hundreds of employees is very challenging. So, how to do that? This is where the leave management process comes to play.
What do you mean by leave tacking or management?
Speaking about leave tracking or management, it is the process of managing employees’ leave based on the current leave policy of the company. This is very important for a business not just for statutory compliance but also for enhanced employees’ productivity and engagement. This process includes different important factors, such as:
- Routine leaves or vacation administration work
- Designing effective leave policies considering the nature of employment
- Implementing the leave policies
Understanding the cost of poor leave management and tracking
Even though tracking employees’ leave as well as attendance is one of the major elements of the payroll process, yet most organizations are not taking this seriously. The process in itself is not time-consuming or challenging, provided the best Leave tracker is deployed to make the process fast and error-free.
However, when carried out in the wrong way, the effects will be very severe. It can have a direct impact on the continuity of the business. On the other hand, it can have a negative influence on the staff. Leave tracking gone wrong can lead to low employee morale and lack of productivity. And you never want to face such issues. Let’s have a closer look at the issues that can arise due to inappropriate or poor leave tracking.
- Unavailability of staff
Resource allocation and planning is an important factors in the process of developing a sustainable business. And leave tracking is a crucial input in this. The HR managers, as well as employers, should have better visibility about the leave eligibility of the employees. Besides, they should know about the outstanding leaves, the status of leaves taken, and employees’ alignment with the company’s leave policy. After analyzing all these things, the projects and roles can be properly staffed. In a company, when employees take too many unplanned leaves or more than the allocated limit, it can lead to a staff shortage issue. Besides, it will be an obstacle to the business community. In this era, where customers need a faster result, the unavailability of required manpower can be a lethal jab to the business. As a result, it will lower the credibility level.
- Various legal challenges
The labor laws of different countries have underlined different leave rules for the employees and employers. Well, the rule can vary based on the employment types. No matter what, all employers need to comply with these laws. Nowadays, you can see different types of work arrangements, such as remote workers, part-time employees, full-time employees, contract workers, and more. This has raised the complexity level of leave compliance, and modern-day employers are now facing the risk of non-compliance. The reputation-hit and cost-hit of non-compliance can be very damaging to a business. With a proper leave tracking system, companies can keep them protected from multiple legal challenges.
- You can’t forget the financial risk.
A company’s leave policy and labor laws talk about the leaves that can be encashed and how many leaves an employee can carry forward. Well, in some cases, leave encashment can be a financial liability for an organization. Paying the person at a particular time for the leave encashment can directly affect the company’s current year’s profit and loss statement. So, it is important for the HR managers while doing leave management to understand the financial outstanding related to the leave encashment. As a result, this will not affect the cash flow.
- Employees morale
Mismanagement of vacations or days off can greatly affect the morale and well-being of the employees. How? Well, the employees who have not taken leaves may deal with the burnt workload as well as stress. The employees who have taken more leaves may showcase a poor employees engagement level. Besides, it suggests that those particular employees have a lower commitment towards their work. This can be a reason for employees’ exit. Besides, taking more than the assigned leaves can develop inter-team conflicts and issues. So, employees and HR managers should understand the purpose of leave utilization in real-time.
What’s more? As per the experts, they should always discuss leave-related issues without any hesitation. It is a fact that the employees feel happy when they get a leave or time off at the time of need. When they don’t get enough leave, it can lead to demoralization and demotivation. Tracking the utilization, planning leaves or time off in advance, and establishing a good leave policy can help you manage the leaves in a better way. In order to make it a little easier for you, you can use a professional PTO tracker, for example, Day Off.
How to carry out effective leave tracking and management? Well, don’t worry at all as here are some experts’ tips that you can follow.
Tips on employees’ leave tracking
The process of leave tracking can be more complex than you assume. The reason behind this is that the HR managers in the companies are assigned a lot of responsibilities to make sure there is a perfect balance between consistent availability of manpower and employee engagement. But here are some tips that you can follow to make the process easier for you. Have a look.
- Use professional leave tracking software and automate the process.
The process of tracking leaves is very complex and can take a lot of time as well as effort. Besides, if you do it manually, you may encounter some errors. So, what is the best solution for this? It’s time to invest in a good Vacation tracker, like Day Off. Such tools are designed to automate the process. As a result, it will eliminate the possible errors and boost efficiency. On the other hand, a good employee time off tracker can make sure that there are no errors or variations in the payroll. With a few clicks, you can get all the details about the employee’s leave and patterns.
When you deploy such software, employees will get access to a self-service portal where they can easily request vacation and enjoy the leave benefits. On the other hand, employers can view as well as approve the leave request in real-time. What’s more? The tool can automatically evaluate the leave requests and monitor the request against the remaining leave balance of the employees. The Free time off tracker can also effectively track the approved, unapproved and outstanding leave applications.
Time off app greatly helps in evaluating the impact of leave and planning the necessary resources for the scheduled projects. As a result, managers or administrators can make effective decisions regarding employees’ leave. Furthermore, the automated leave manager tools allow the HR management to enforce the company’s new leave policy accurately and fairly. Leave application approval and routing process can also be adjusted based on the company’s requirements. The most important thing to consider here is, that managers can now access information in real-time for reporting, analysis, and making financial estimates.
- Allow the employees to apply for the leaves in advance.
When the employees don’t plan their leaves in advance, this can create challenges for the employers in managing the resources for the ongoing projects. An Employee leave tracker app can make it a lot easier for the employees to plan in advance and get approvals beforehand. As a result, there will be no nightmare of the unavailability of resources. Even if the employees are taking leave, this will not affect productivity.
- Create awareness about the leave policy
It is quite important for the employees to know about the current leave policy of the company so that they can comply with the policy. Well, it is the responsibility of HR to make sure that the leave policy is readily available to the employees. So that they can go through it before applying for a leave. A PTO tracking software lets you upload and send the leave policy on the platform; Besides, all the information will be saved in the cloud storage, and employees can access it whenever they want.
- Better integration with the payroll module
What makes the attendance and leave of the employees a major responsibility of HR is the fact that the payroll of the staff will be greatly affected by the leave tracking data. As every organization wants to make sure that there is no inconsistency in the payroll, the best way is to integrate the Day off app into the payroll system. As a result, there will be a proper data integration between them, and you don’t have to evaluate anything manually.
- Being empathetic towards your staff
It is important for employers to understand that sometimes an employee may ask for additional leaves due to any genuine circumstance. Rejecting the leave requests in such a situation can negatively affect the morale of the employees. So, what is the trick? Well, you need to develop the right balance between the interests of the organization as well as the employees.
- HR managers should set a realistic return.
As per the experts, HR managers should always focus on having a realistic return to job expectations. What does that mean? If an employee is taking a week off from his work due to any complicated medical condition, setting up a comfortable or welcoming return environment to work can motivate them, and this will boost their morale.
- Provide the employees holiday pay when you need them to work
During the holiday season, the companies deal with two major things, i.e., work becomes very hectic, and it decreases in terms of volume. Well, if your sales are growing during the holidays, then you should offer holiday pay to attract more employees to work during that time. In fact, such incentives will be good for the employees who are looking for different ways to make extra money. Besides, this will motivate the employees not to take more leaves.
Use the best Employee time off tracker and manage the employees’ leave tracking to keep your business running smoothly. A Free vacation tracker can come with advanced reporting functions. You can use those reports to make an informed business decision. For example, it can assist you in addressing absenteeism issues. Besides, you can study leave-related trends. So, use the best tools, such as Day Off, and enjoy the easiest way of leave management.