3 Main Challenges in Leave Management

Employee engagement and satisfaction play a critical role in a company's success. Of the many factors that improve employee engagement, the hassle-free leave request process and timely approval of requests has a significant impact.

In the traditional leave request system, there are usually delays in confirming the request, followed by approving it, and sometimes denying it without giving a reason.

One of our sales representatives recently faced a similar situation where an organization's employees were struggling to effectively manage their leave request process. It was a challenge for the organization to eliminate unexpected delays in leave approval, reduce inefficiencies in leave transactions for team members, and avoid financial leaks due to unnoticed leave transactions.

Our sales team had several conversations with the client to understand their issues. The organization had 3 main challenges at different levels in the company hierarchy.

Challenge 1: Employees were not aware of their leave balances and updates to the company's leave policy
The HR department received more than 100 inquiries each week about employee leave balances. This took up a lot of time and kept HR from focusing on the most important core tasks.

On the other hand, employees had to wait a long time to find out their leave balances and access leave and attendance details.

Employees were dissatisfied because they were not receiving timely updates on leave policies and other compliance issues. A constant delay in leave approval increased frustration among employees.

Challenge 2: Supervisors were unable to manage their team members' leave and make informed decisions before approving leave
The company reported that supervisors often had difficulty in the leave approval process.

Line managers were unable to:

• Identify patterns of leave requests from employees who inappropriately take advantage of the leave policy
• Gain insight into the availability of team members during a given period
• Make well-informed decisions about approving/rejecting leave

Challenge 3: Increased payroll errors due to undocumented leave transactions
Paid time off from work significantly impacts a company's bottom line.

The company faced inefficiencies in efficiently managing leave transactions for each department.

Leave without pay (LWP) is a leave type that can lead to payroll errors if not properly recorded. Human Resources was unable to manage the burden of leave transactions and reduce manual errors in calculating LWP and employee paid leave. This resulted in excessive financial leakage in leave, attendance and expense related transactions.

IceHrm leave management software: a one-stop solution!
Despite being an important aspect of a business, vacation and absence is not given the attention it deserves.

Managing employee leave transactions is a major challenge for small and medium-sized businesses, and as a result, they overlook the need to track employee absences! Disgruntled or inefficient employees do not make a successful business. To overcome absence compliance issues, the HR department in every business is constantly taking steps to have a robust, reliable absence management process.

Most companies provide their employees with high visibility into their leave management process by using cloud-based leave management software.

The leave and attendance management software maintains a centralized data repository for keeping leave records and other necessary attendance details. It facilitates the users to:

• Submit the online application for leave
• Check the requested leave status and leave balance
• View the list of leave days updated by the company
• View attendance records
• Prevent vacation compliance issues
• View unavailability dashboards to plan team assignments and make informed decisions before acting on leave requests
• Maintain regular attendance to reduce time spent on queries after pay is disbursed
• Take control of your team's leave transactions
• Reduce the burden of leave transactions and manual data entry errors

An efficient system for managing workforce leave needs is key to operational and administrative success. Online leave management software like IceHrm keeps track of employee attendance and effortlessly manages their time. Visibility into leave management increases employee satisfaction and engagement, lowering turnover rates.