How to Choose a Leave Management System?

Leave management is one of the key elements of your organization. It allows you to optimize your workflow, avoid bottlenecks and increase the productivity of your team. Check if your organization needs a leave management system and which tool to choose!

What will get to know from this article:

• • Features of a leave management software that are sought by managers
  • Top absence management software for big and small businesses, including remote work
  • Why do you need a leave management tool?
  • Why resource management software with leave management system features is used in PM processes

Let’s face it – in most companies, leave management is a mess. Requests sent on resource or by email often go unanswered for days or are easily forgotten. Employees who do not know who will be on leave at any given time cannot plan their tasks together with other team members. Bottlenecks due to lack of sufficient capacity during busy periods such as holidays or the end of the year. Public holidays fall on different days for different countries, which is very important when you manage an international team.

Poor leave management process has a very negative impact on the flow of work in the entire company, causing delays and chaos. It is therefore advisable to introduce an effective, bulletproof online leave management software.

What to consider choosing a leave management system?

You already know the benefits of a leave management system. Now ask yourself, does your business need one? Who knows, maybe you already have the perfect tool for this purpose. On the other hand, since you are reading this article, you are probably looking for information on how you can improve the quality of your leave management. So answer a few questions and diagnose if your business needs a new solution.

Can you define a vacation allowance and automatically block users from requesting more days off than allowed?

It will be difficult for you to check each time how many days off an employee has before you accept their leave request. In addition, manually entering the days used after each completed leave is another time-consuming activity that may not be necessary if the system does it for you. A good leave management system will automatically block you from taking leave that exceeds the number of available days off.

Does the leave management system contain an email notification flow?

Sometimes it’s easy to miss a leave request, so your system should inform you about it via the channel you use most. Make sure that your leave management tool sends an email notification that a request has been received and reminds you to accept it.

Who receives the requests? Are they capable of accepting them?

Nothing lengthens the approval process more than bouncing from person to person. An employee sends a leave request to their team leader, who sends it to their department head, who has to pass it on to someone else, and so on. Make requests go straight to the person who can approve them. A well-designed leave management system will give you the ability to automatically route requests to the right people. This avoids confusion and makes the whole process quick and clear.

Does your leave management system comply with and support local law and easily support local bank holidays?

As we have already mentioned, managing an international team is a tricky thing because of local holidays, among other things. It’s not a problem when your employees work from one country – you all celebrate the same national holidays and don’t even need to enter them into the system.

What’s different is if your team is in 10 different countries and each has different local bank holidays. If you have trouble keeping track of international holidays, find a system that automatically blocks holidays for people working in a particular country.

Can you have custom vacation reasons and define custom vacation time?

Holidays are not the same. Apart from the classic holiday, there is also maternity, sick, on-demand, or childcare leaves. Each of these is accounted for slightly differently depending on the contract and circumstances. It is therefore important that your employees can define customized vacation reasons and times. This will avoid additional confusion with the accounting of days off.

Can the system integrate or support capacity management?

Holidays affect other aspects of the organization, such as project resource management. It would be very time-consuming if you had to calculate how days off affect your company’s capacity every time.

A good leave management system should therefore be able to integrate easily with other work management tools... And ideally, leave, resources, task, and time management should all be possible from one comprehensive tool.

Which leave management system should you choose?

It’s not such a simple task, as everyone tries to convince you that their solution is the best, so below we have summarised some of the best tools available on the market.

Leave management systems and employee planners with leave management features 

Teamdeck.io – Employee Resource Planner with Leave Management System Features

Teamdeck – cloud-based resource management software – is a universal, straight-to-the-point, transparent tool for managing various aspects of work. It was created by an experienced software house to meet the needs of other software houses and the tech industry. However, it quickly became apparent that the software house’s distinctive efficient way of managing work was also adopted by other industries, such as creative agencies, financial organizations, growing startups, and large modern corporations. Teamdeck.io includes a leave management software feature with time-off and absence management functions.

The system makes it easy for the leave management processes – to send employee leave requests, including reasons and length of leave, and address them to the appropriate people. It makes managing an international team easier as it takes into account local bank holidays and the time zones of the respective country.

Current holidays of all team members are immediately uploaded in their availability and schedule panel, so you can always quickly see what resources you have at your disposal. Teamdeck’s leave management system is available for all employees you select, including freelancers, who can easily mark their time of absence, for example for the whole week, or just a few hours in a day. 

The custom reasons function gives you the option of using an individual leave type, marking it as paid or unpaid, and assigning the relevant employees and departments to an individual leave policy. In this way, in addition to the classic types of leave such as annual leave or sick leave, you can also monitor and easily manage other reasons for taking days off.

You can carry out the entire process inside the app, but Teamdeck will send you an additional email notification when a leave request is received. If you want to check your organization’s days off statistics, Teamdeck will generate a clear and complete report for you.

Sage HR – HR Management Software

This is a simple and easy-to-use HR management tool for leave management. It’s based on a shared calendar, so anyone added to the system can see their colleagues’ availability straight away. It allows you to easily send requests and accept them right away and gives you the ability to create reports. If what you need is not in the default leave types, you can easily create custom options.

This hr software gives each employee access to their individual account to see how many days off they have left and the acceptance status of their requests. The app is available in web and mobile app versions. Sage HR is integrated with Slack, so you can accept employee time-off requests directly from that tool. 

Podio – Task Management and Leave Management System

Podio is a tool created for those who are not satisfied with ready-made solutions. The system gives you a lot of customization possibilities and can be tailored to the company’s individual needs. Firstly, the Podio frontend is built on the API so developers can flexibly develop the system to suit the entire company’s needs.

Secondly, the system has extensive integration possibilities with other tools. By uploading selected extensions, you can use other applications within Podio. The system is not a typical leave management system, but you can integrate it with, for example, Google Calendar or Teamdeck. This way, you can implement tailor-made functionalities for your business and get the features you need to track and accept your employees’ days off. And more. 

Bamboo HR – HR and Leave Manegement System Software

In bamboo HR, employees can quickly and easily submit leave requests and managers can just as quickly and easily accept them. The system shows possible scheduling conflicts with meetings or other employees’ holidays to provide all the data needed to accept the request. Both parties can add a note to the submission to justify the request and decision.

The leave management system converts selected days into hours to make it easier to plan company capacity. One PTO policy may not be suitable for every company, so custom settings can be created in Bamboo HR. With just a few clicks in the application, several types of leave reports can be generated. This makes it easy for managers to check holiday trends, even those that are not obvious at first glance. This makes it easier for them to plan the strategic workflow of the organization.

Hi Bob – HR Management Platform

Hi Bob is an easy-going leave management system. It allows employees to choose any type of leave like holidays, sick days, PTO tracking, vacation days, or parental leave. They can specify the duration of their leave and send requests directly to their supervisors.

An important advantage of the app is its integration with Slack and MS Teams, so managers can quickly approve leave while using their daily communication tools. Of course, the whole thing is also available as a web and mobile app.

The application also allows you to create and assign custom policies for selected groups of employees and positions, making the tool very flexible, regardless of the form of employment. The system automatically reports current, past, and pending employee leaves requests, so you can easily check the statistics and statuses of different types of requests for individual employees and departments.

Improve your leave management system and see how much your company can gain

Leave management is an issue for every organization, regardless of size, industry, or working pattern. Don’t let a lack of proper procedures and tools reduce your efficiency and employee satisfaction. Analyze your company’s needs, check the weak points of your current solution, and let a professional leave management system unlock new potential for your team.

Why do you need a leave management system software?

According to a CIPD study, employees take an average of 6 days off per year for a variety of reasons. This may not seem like much, but not having the right procedures in place to organize this time off can wreck work organization with a snowball effect.

Leave management, or time-off management is the process of accepting, optimizing, and tracking employees’ days off and holidays in an organization. It has a colossal impact on the health of your business and you should make it a priority. What benefits can it bring to your business? How to assess whether your organization needs a leave management tool?

1. Increased productivity and employee satisfaction

Even the most interesting and inspiring work can be tiring and employees have every right to rest and recharge their batteries for the next challenge. It’s very frustrating when your team feels they can’t go on a well-deserved holiday because the company needs them and there’s no one to replace them. According to researcher Mark Rosekind of Alertness Solutions, “The respite effect of a vacation can increase performance by 80%. Reaction times of returning vacationers increased 40%”.

A person who knows that an organization cares about their wellbeing and work-life balance will simply be more productive because their needs will be met. It is management’s responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure that everyone can take their days off and that work flows smoothly. This is the mark of good leave management.

2. Optimising working time

Every company has its priorities and most important projects. However, it is natural that sometimes urgent tasks and requests arise that were not previously planned in the schedule. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is not at the expense of key responsibilities.

Leave management allows you to better assess whether an employee has the space to take care of additional tasks before leaving, or whether it is better for them to focus on priorities that cannot wait two weeks for their return. 

3. Better management of an international remote team

Managing a team working remotely from different countries requires a powerful leave management system that takes into account different time zones and national holidays in many countries. 

4. Better allocation of resources

Knowing the capacity of your company is the basis of proper resource management. With leave management, you’ll be able to see which employees are on leave and efficiently allocate replacements, distribute tasks according to the capacity of the relevant departments, and allocate support where it’s needed.

5. Avoiding bottlenecks

Bottlenecks are a crisis moment for every company. They arise when you do not have enough resources (money, employees, technology, time) to perform a given task. Employee holidays often generate bottlenecks because an incomplete team has less capacity than usual. Effective leave management will allow you to prepare for these situations in advance and minimize the difficulty of maintaining a normal work pace.

6. Clear workflow structure

Employee leave is not information that is only important to the manager. A company is a system of interacting elements, so every employee should know about the availability of other people in the organization. And it is not only about members of the same team. When planning their work, people need to know whether the person who can help them with a particular task will be available at that time. This applies to every department and position. Leave management, therefore, ensures a clear workflow structure and translates into greater efficiency.

The leave management system keeps businesses stable

Before you get from us knowledge about leave management, you should also know where a leave management is placed in the market to have a bigger picture and make more accurate buying decisions for leave management system software

Leave management is a part of time and attendance management. So, let’s take a look at those two. But to not go too deep with issues that aren’t the clue of this chapter, time management is the process of planning and exercising control of time spent on specific activities. Especially those ones that are connected with increasing effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. To say it simply, it’s about how to split time between different actions and stay productive for each of them.

While attendance management is the way you keep track of employee hours. It’s the system to document the time employees work and the time they take off. Its main goal is to prevent employee time loss by tracking employee working hours, login time, departures, breaks, and time off.

So, it’s time for the main term of our conversation – leave management. No one needs to think long about what leave management means. Leave management (or just time-off management, or PTO management) refers to managing employee leave requests. To be more specific, it’s about parental, period, sick leaves, parental leaves, period leaves, holidays, and others, sometimes unplanned leave decisions.

And the leading goal of this complex of actions named “leave management” is to ensure employees enjoy their benefits in a hassle-free way without letting the same impact on the business functioning.

Leave management is the administration of employee leave as per company leave policy not only for statutory compliance but also for better employee engagement, productivity, and employer branding. (GreytHR.com)

As we can read further on the GreyHR website, there are three overall spots of leave management: designing leave policies, implementing and executing leave policies, and regularly leave administration work. Nevertheless, GreyHR doesn’t mention anything about the huge closeness between time-off management and running a business forward or – to say more relevantly – between an employee’s time-off and the projects’ progress.

The goal of leave management is to handle employee time-off requests in a fair and accurate way so business runs smoothly while employees get the benefits they are entitled to. (Lucidchart.com)

While GreyHR accents engagement and productivity (and employer branding) as undoubted worry of employee time-off planning, Lucidhart pays attention to unwavering business performance as a criterium or focus that determines decisions according to approval for time-off.

Looking for a leave management system?

Circus Maximus, Hill-Knowlton, Stormind Games, NTT Data have selected Teamdeck with leave management software feature