Employee leave management isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. But as a business owner or employer, it’s important you manage the different forms of staff leave effectively and efficiently.
Ultimately, it should be easy. Taking the time to set up a good leave management system will allow you to reap the rewards down the track.
When you don’t have a careful leave management system set up, you have to do it all manually. If you’re not fully on top of things, it can get messy fast.
The more time you spend processing leave and all the required paperwork in other areas of your business, the less time you have to spend being productive. Plus, the chances of making a mistake are significantly less when you set up a leave management system.
While leave is a simple concept, it flows through into a number of areas into the business. This is where having a simple system makes all the difference.
The reality is, staff can’t work all day, every day. In fact, taking leave is important in enabling employees to be refreshed, switched on and productive when they’re at work.
There are many different types of leave, including sick leave, annual leave, alternative holidays, bereavement leave and many more. It’s vital they’re recorded and managed properly to prevent flow-on effects in other areas of your business.
If staff leave isn’t managed correctly, it impacts project timelines, can create bottlenecks, and lead to payroll errors. All of these are elementary administrative mistakes that can have a significant effect on a company’s bottom line and working culture.
Fortunately, modern leave management systems have evolved to be easy to use and highly efficient. Specialist software such as Smartly is commonly used to create efficiencies in the process.
Benefits of a leave management software for employees and employers include:
Each staff member has a handful of different types of leave that all have a running balance. Tracking these balances manually takes constant effort and regular adjustment when they take leave.
Leave management software tracks all relevant leave and the rates at which it is paid so managers have accurate records of future, current and past leave.
Attendance tracking happens in real time and feeds through to automated payroll data. This is a significant benefit compared to the labour intensive, error-prone alternative of processing leave manually. Easy to use software also reduces unplanned absences by allowing staff to access it from anywhere.
Leave monitoring also allows managers to make adjustments to planned work if it’s impacted by last minute absences or unexpected leave.
Leave software enables managers to produce reports on staff attendance compared to projections so you can make informed decisions about leave policies.
Managers can easily see leave balances for the whole team to understand who’s taking leave and who isn’t, which helps to identify staff that might need a break to avoid burning out.
Communication between employees and managers is a key aspect of the leave management process, and your software becomes the shared home of all leave-related issues.
This means emails aren’t lost in your inbox and it’s easy to go back and find leave requests and other communication.
When payroll doesn’t correctly take leave into account, it’s bad for staff relations. Employees need to be paid correctly to stay motivated and organised at work - if payroll is unreliable they’re not likely to give their best effort at work. Not only that, but leave errors impact workplace productivity.
Having automated processes eliminates these errors, while also slashing the manual tasks that are involved in handling leave requests.
The errors mentioned above can create compliance issues for organisations that make consistent mistakes in leave management. Legislation governs the minimum requirements for leave entitlements, rates and records that need to be kept.
Leave management software is much more likely to ensure that minimum standards for leave are being met with less likelihood of further errors that compound compliance issues.
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There are a handful of different online leave management systems, all of which have their own features and setups. In order to get the benefits discussed above, look out for the following:
The dashboard display should make all the most useful information clear and visible at a glance. Leave balances, holiday lists, department schedules and workforce coverage is all critical information for both employees requesting leave and managers assessing leave requests.
An effective leave management system needs to accommodate many different employee work patterns. From full time regular hours, to part time and casual employment. The leave system should ensure that despite the different patterns of work that each employee is receiving their minimum entitlements correctly
It’s critical the approval workflow can be customised to allow for relevant parties to be consulted and notified when staff members submit leave requests. This goes back to the importance of communication in effective leave management.
Cloud-based systems are more accessible and flexible than legacy options, and allow employees and managers to use them from anywhere at any time.
Integration is the key to efficiency, and allows workplaces to save significant time and money. A good leave management software will communicate with all relevant business areas when necessary, including payroll, work calendars, resource availability schedules and more.
As a manager, the way information is reported impacts your ability to gain insights and make decisions. Your software should generate reports quickly and easily, and make the most significant data clear and obvious.
Smartly is the simple way to sort your payroll, including managing leave and saving time in all aspects of the payroll process.
Whether your payroll is handled by you as the manager, or specialist admin staff, Smartly’s automation and simplicity helps to slash the time it takes to pay staff.
Booking leave is simple, approving it is just as easy, and Smartly communicates to all relevant areas of the business without you having to do anything. It’s an all-in-one leave management system that creates accuracy and reliability in all things payroll.
Take the hassle out of payroll and leave management with Smartly.. Find out more about the benefits of Smartly for your business today.
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If you want to learn more about how your day-to-day tasks can be made simpler, you can chat to us to get some insight on how payroll software could benefit your business. Smartly can make the complex tasks seem simple including payroll, timesheets, leave and more! Smartly takes care of most of the faffing, so you can focus on the important stuff.
