What is a Leave Management System?
To achieve overall company success, it’s crucial to make sure your HR department keeps employees’ health and motivation a priority. In other words, your HR department should have systems in place to assist employees in the workplace. Additionally, a motivated employee is less likely to take sudden and often unexpected leaves of absence. A typical employee has an absence rate that averages out to 2.9% in the United States.
While there are numerous types of absences, such as unavoidable or sudden emergencies, your company needs to have a way of managing any absence. For example, how do your employees notify you of an unexpected absence if they need to?
By having a consistent leave management system, you can ensure that the impact of unforeseen absences is lessened. To learn more about the benefits of leave management, consider the following benefits listed below.
How a Leave Management System Benefits Your Employees
Maintain Consistent Communication
Any communication in your company must remain consistent. When a team collaborates on a project, for instance, transparent communication results in a more successful outcome. Consider what your current expectations are for employees who will be absent from work. Do employees call in when they’re sick, for example? Essentially, creating a leave management system can assess current absence expectations and make them consistent throughout the entire company. Some examples include telling employees that, if they are absent, they should share important client files with teammates.
Thus, the company’s workflow doesn’t come to a stop if an employee needs to take a leave of absence, whether it is a long or short one. Plus, a consistent system makes it much easier for employees to take time off when necessary.
See Absence Trends
By having a consistent way of reporting these absences, your HR department can see if there are any trends in absences. For example, are there times in the year when more employees take time off or have unexpected absences?
Throughout the year, absenteeism may arise due to a variety of reasons. One primary reason for absenteeism is due to an employee being disengaged and overall unhappy in the workplace. Employees may have more absences during a stressful period for the company, which can thus be seen in absenteeism trends. To counteract these trends, your HR department can do a variety of things alongside implementing a leave management program. For example, communicating what sick time and PTO an employee has can help decrease absenteeism. The reason for this decrease is because the employee knows what time they can take when they need to as well as how to communicate those needs to HR.
Plus, making sure employees know when they can take a break can help decrease employee burnout, which can often arise from working too much without taking a much-needed break. Less burnout also means more productivity, as well.
Motivate Employees and Boost Productivity
Emphasizing employee wellness in the workplace is one of the best ways to improve productivity. For example, 64% of employees shared that when they get PTO, they don’t use all of it. The reason this time wasn’t used was related to several factors, including the amount of work they felt they had to get done.
By and large, having a motivated employee base also means they are more engaged as a whole. In fact, it has been shown that a more involved team sees less absenteeism and turnover overall. So, with a well-structured leave management system, you can boost employee morale and, thus, increase company success.
Make Employee Success a Priority With Leave Management
In the end, having programs such as a leave management system in place is one step of many in making your company successful. Nonetheless, to ensure this success takes place, you need the right HR staff.
When it comes to projects like planning a leave management system, hiring an interim senior HR professional can be beneficial. They can bring in their expertise on HR as well as their outside perspective to make sure your employee’s needs are met.
Are you looking for an interim HR professional who can assist your team in creating an in-depth leave management system? Contact the team at Interim HR consulting to find the right candidate for your HR needs.
IHR cannot and does not provide legal advice. It’s important to consult with qualified counsel before adopting any new policies. It’s also your responsibility to determine whether legal review of work product is necessary prior to implementation.