Managing employee leaves manually is a mammoth and challenging task for HR managers, given the number of employees and the increased chance of errors. Maintaining and tracking employee leaves manually can lead to inadvertent errors, delays in processing leaves, updating status and subsequent errors in payslip and payroll management. The mistakes keep on compounding, thereby leading to a disastrous situation in HR management.
While many companies have made the switch to automated systems, others are still working on paper-based outdated systems for managing employee leave and attendance. In a mismanaged situation, employees run behind managers to get their leaves approved and managers are scurrying through spreadsheets to track leave balance. Whereas, in an automated system, the entire workflow for leave management is smooth and seamless without burdening the employees, manager, or HR management. Using inefficient tools harms the productivity and efficiency levels of employees.
Some of the challenges that businesses may face with a manual process of leave management include:
- Delays in approval
- Mismanaged leave balance
- Faulty monitoring or tracking of employee leaves
- Inaccuracies in leave management affecting payroll
- Difficulties for employees to plan and apply for leave
- Difficult for managers to approve
- No centralized system for tracking employee leaves
To stay clear of administrative pitfalls, businesses need to adopt a leave management system. An overworked employee is unproductive and unattentive in the workplace. Time-off allows employees to get proper rest, maintain a healthy work-life balance, and return rejuvenated to the workplace. Leave management is the process of managing and tracking employee leaves accurately and in a fair manner. A good leave management system offers features and functionalities that are beneficial for employees and employers, alike.
The solution should be robust to seamlessly manage all the steps of the leave approval process and help the management to effectively manage the process.
Let’s look at the top functionalities that your leave management system must include:
- Intuitive dashboard where employees and stakeholders can check leave balance, leave history, official holiday list, approval status, etc. This allows employees to apply for leave beforehand and the management to plan accordingly.
- Managers can view staff holidays and delegate work to resources accordingly.
- The system should provide configurable leave fields that can be modified according to the needs of your organization. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution should generally be avoided.
- A cloud-based and on-premise system allows employees or management to access key data from anywhere, on their devices easily. This autonomy is crucial to organizational success.
- It automates leave management by eliminating manual calculations in updating leave balance. It successfully tracks leave history and displays it to managers and employees alike.
- A configurable workflow for setting up the department-wise hierarchy and ensuring a systematic streamlined workflow. Once an employee applies for leave, an automated workflow ensures that the manager receives a notification, and post-approval, the leave balance gets updated.
- In-built reporting module to generate intuitive reports without any manual work.
- Seamless integration with other third-party apps like payroll, attendance management, etc. to eliminate silos, and enable cross-functional reporting.
There are multiple benefits of using a leave management system for SMBs. It eliminates dependency on manual work, improves the workflow, reduces errors, offers real-time insights while ensuring legal compliance.
Paylite HRMS modules allow employees to apply for leaves in a hassle-free manner and keep track of their leave history, leave balance easily. For HR managers, it is a huge burden off their shoulders as they no longer have to manually calculate and delegate leaves to each employee and can simply use the system to track and manage different employee leaves and policies. It saves time and eliminates all errors that can occur in managing employee leaves manually. It further allows the HR staff on developing other key business activities for the organization instead of being engaged in routine administrative tasks.
Sign-up for a free demo of Paylite HRMS: https://www.paylitehr.com/request-demo.html.