Four Tips for Better Handling Time-off Requests
Time-off requests are an essential part of any full-time employment. From an employer’s perspective, managing the sick and annual leaves of an entire team might be quite challenging, especially when it grows to 50 employees and on. So let’s see what can be done to better handle time-off requests in your company.
Define clear rules for time-off requests
When the time-off process in a company is a mess, this may lead to employees being absent without any notice or managers forgetting to approve requests, resulting in everyone’s dissatisfaction and missed deadlines. Setting clear and easy-to-follow rules concerning time-off requests will help you avoid conflicts and misunderstandings.
For example, you can specify a few types of leaves of absence (sick leave, vacation, maternity/paternity leave, etc.) and outline rules for each type — how many days off are available per year, at what notice employees can leave, who should approve the request, what happens to the unused days off at the end of the year, and so forth.
Provide a single entry point
In small businesses time-off requests are often handled in an informal way — by simply approving the employee’s leave of absence in a live conversation or via email. However, as the number of employees grows, the need for a uniform system arises — otherwise, dozens of time off requests can distract you from your primary activities.
A good solution could be to introduce a single entry point for all time-off requests so that employees know exactly what to do and where to file a request. This could be an email alias, a dedicated manager, or a web form. Some HR management software, like Brainy HR, also feature time-off requests functionality. Another benefit of such an approach is that you’ll have all the requests stored in one place, which can be extremely useful for HR accounting.
Make the process transparent for everyone
It is also essential to ensure process transparency for both employees and the management. When the information about employees’ days off and the vacation schedule are hidden, this may cause lots of mess and confusion. For example, if an employee hasn’t documented their vacation anywhere, their colleagues might get in a scrape because they counted on their support. Besides, vacation overlapping might occur, which can seriously hamper team productivity.
In an optimal scenario, employees can view how many days off they have left as well as their teammates’ vacation dates so that they can choose other dates in case their simultaneous absence is undesirable. HR management solutions provide a user-friendly and transparent environment for both sending and managing time-off requests.
Automate notifications and approvals
Certain operations concerning time-off management can be easily automated, which will save you a lot of time. For example, when an employee requests time-off via a form, an automatic notification is sent to their supervisor and the HR manager. Then, as soon as they approve (or decline) the request, the employee gets another notification.
A more sophisticated automation might include auto-approvals of certain leave types — for example, if an employee is asking for medical leave and cannot wait until the manager handles the request. Brainy HR makes it possible to add and configure such automation for different time-off cases.
