5 reasons why your company needs time off manager

An unscheduled leave can be a dwelling killer of a company's performance. Digital leave management system (or a time off manager) is the most convenient and reliable way the HR department can tackle this issue.

The practice of skipping a day of work or school without a good reason is nearly as old as duties are. On the other hand though, with the big data revolution and the new ways to track performance we are able for the first time to track and count the missing days and how much money companies lose due to this practice.

According to the “Absenteeism, the bottom-line killer” report delivered by Circadian, a typical shift worker in the US comes with an additional $2,660 cost of absenteeism. Assuming that the company has 50 shift workers, there are up to $133,000 to pay for their unscheduled free days.

This cost stacks up from:

• The productivity loss due to the missing employee
• A higher wage cost due to the overtime work done by another employee or the need to look for the temporary worker as a replacement.
• An administrative cost of counting the unscheduled leaves and the wages for replacement.
• Dropping quality of products or services due to the unexpected shortage of workforce.
• The business uncertainty rose from all aspects mentioned above including skipped deadlines and other effects.

There are multiple systems to deal with this issue and the most common is a leave management system, and a leave management process itself.

What is leave management system

Although one can think that keeping employees working as long as possible is the best way to make them productive, the truth is exactly the opposite. Employees need days off. On the other hand though, these days need to be taken accordingly to the company’s schedule and plans, to not disturb the work nor hurt the productivity of the team.

Managing the time employees are out of the office for any given reason is called leave management. The digital solution designed to support this process is called a Leave Management System. Sometimes a time-off manager term is used.

The ability to count all days off and pay the employees a fair wage for their workdays is a reason good enough to implement the leave management system. But it is far from being the only one.

Leave management system benefits

The leave management can be done with the spreadsheet or even with a pen and paper notebook – sometimes these sturdy and unsophisticated tools just do the job. But implementing more reliable and convenient digital tools comes with multiple benefits unseen before.

1. Saving money

The most obvious benefit of using the leave management system is that it saves money – tones of them in fact. The sole fact of implementing it immediately cuts of the following costs: The man-hours of the HR department, that would be otherwise used to collect all information about absences, counting the hours and wages.

Also, the manual processing of the leave requests or unexpected leaves requires a good deal of employees’ time. The cost of it is directly related to their payroll - the bigger is their hourly wage, the bigger are the company’s losses.

2. Boosting productivity

Although the system that tracks the attendance seems irrelevant to the productivity of the company, the truth is a direct opposite. There are numerous ways how leave management influences the efficiency of the work.

• Automatization – the staff needs not to process piles of documents or exchange information in an asynchronous manner. All the data about upcoming or current absences is stored within the system, right to be checked or updated at need.
• Included data management – online attendance software solutions deliver both front and back end to support the user’s goals. Thus, there is no need to manage the leave data, integrate them or gather throughout the organization
• Ease of usage – employee vacation trackers are harnessing the power of the latest technologies, including mobile apps. Thus, the company can make the sole process of time tracking and attendance fully automated, to be tossed out of the mind of the employee. By that, there will be the situation of forgetting to turn on the timer no more.

But the benefits listed above are not the only aspects that boost productivity by leave management. The online system makes taking leave days more convenient, encouraging the employees to do so, sometimes ad-hoc, to reduce stress or just take a breath.

Stress management is one of the core strategies to avoid burnout and restoring health, making the employee more productive. If taking a day off is a tedious process of printing a pile of documents, the employee may think it is not worth it. If it is just two clicks away – why not?

3. Making informed decisions

The leave management system stores all the information about planned leaves of all employees, starting from juniors ending with most experienced employees. This can be vital information when it comes to managing the deadlines and projects done for clients.

Also, having a clear understanding of workforce availability, the HR department can easily manage the skills available for the company’s offer. Considering that, it would be much easier to decide about recruitment or other processes supervised by HR specialists.

4. Being compliant with the law

Keeping the staff management procedures sticking to the legal frames is a work for its own, sometimes requiring a separate specialist to be hired. The external leave management system ensures that the company’s leave policy is well documented and compliant. Also, finding a trusted partner who provides cloud-based attendance tracking services makes it easier to be GDPR compliant – usually, companies are focused on keeping employee information safe and can guarantee much higher levels of security than a typical company would.

To err is human, but reducing errors, typos and other trivial mistakes that are easy to avoid by implementing the leave management software is as smart as obvious.

5. Increased employee satisfaction

Last but not least, having a clear situation regarding the leave days, how many of them are left, and how many (and when!) has been spent is boosting team morale and work satisfaction. According to the MediaBulletin, up to 64% of US workers feel refreshed and energized after a vacation and are in favor of taking a break from time to time.

Also, if the company feels well-managed and stable, employees are more likely to stick to it and feel more secure about their jobs. Sticking to the antiquated pen-and-paper procedures is counterproductive and can go with some bad PR.

Summary

Leave management system is a must of any modern institution that wills to stay competitive both as the company and the employer. It keeps papers managed, employees clear about their situation, and management well-informed about planned leaves or vacations.

If you have some questions regarding the system or just wish to discuss your approach toward the leave management – just drop us a line!