With the growing popularity of no-limit vacation policies and flexible working hours, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the days of attendance employee tracking are soon to be gone, at least in some industries.
Yet, I will argue that absence tracking is a key process for companies that want to maintain a transparent team schedule and a well-balanced team workload. It’s just the focus tends to be less on controlling the individuals and more on being able to plan the work in an optimal way.
What will you get with this article:
- 4 solutions to how resource planning software helps with absence tracking
- how to choose relevantly an employee leave management system
- how to manage employee attendance
- why Teamdeck – the resource management software – is selected as the main absence tracking software
This text outlines key steps you need to take in order to build an absence tracking process that is easy to maintain. This approach requires you to take advantage of digital tools so that your team can collaborate with you. A spreadsheet is a possible choice but it has fewer options than dedicated resource management software: apps for absence management are often equipped with reporting features or a vacation request workflow.
Let’s go through the essential steps of introducing leave management at your company. Each point will be accompanied by a quick instruction on how Teamdeck can be of benefit here.
Establish a vacation policy
That’s the necessary step in creating any processes that have to do with time off. Perhaps you’ve already created a set of rules that works well for your team. In that case, you can move to the next point.
If your vacation policy is yet to be created or is a work in progress, then make sure to cover these aspects:
- Types of employee absences (sick leave, sabbatical, maternity leave, etc.),
- Compensation per vacation type (which types of absences are compensated for?),
- Number of paid vacation days per employee (does it change over time?),
- Minimum advance notice when requesting holidays.
When you’re done drawing up the rules, ask yourself these questions:
- Is your policy relevant for part-time workers and/or freelancers?
- Is it a big cultural change for the employees? Should you run a team consultation?
- Do your policy cover less common cases? For example, what happens when someone doesn’t “use” all of their allotted vacation days during the year?
Your vacation policy needs to be clearly communicated to existing employees and become a part of onboarding for new hires.
How can Teamdeck help with absence tracking?
As an organization admin, you can choose from a variety of uploaded absence types or add your own. Absence types are customizable: you can edit their names, assign color codes and specify whether they’re paid or not. Now when your employees need to request a vacation, they just have to pick a type from the list.
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Simplify the time off request workflow to increase absence tracking
Raise your hand if you have ever been a part of a long email chain when just trying to secure a day off. I’m sure most of you have. It’s not efficient and frustrating for employees and managers alike.
This is why a time-off request workflow needs to be planned and implemented. Ideally, you want to eliminate the need for back and forth. You can do it by using vacation request forms that include all details that are necessary to inform a decision. The same goes for the manager’s response: whether the request was approved or refused, the employee needs to be notified as soon as possible.
How can Teamdeck help with absence tracking?
The vacation request & approval process is happening within the app, thus saving you potential communication chaos. Employees can request a vacation by clicking on a selected date and filling out a short form.
Managers receive the request right away and can respond immediately. Once a new vacation request is approved, the team calendar is updated accordingly.
Make absences visible for key team members
This point could also be titled “make absences visible for all team members” but this depends on your workplace transparency policy. While it’s completely understandable that not all of the team members need to access everyone else’s absence calendars, the same cannot be said for project managers, team leaders, or new business developers. Anyone who is tasked with planning projects (or securing new ones – hence the sales team), should be able to see who’s available to work. Otherwise, the team’s true capacity will be unknown, which can lead to major planning blunders.
Having a transparent team calendar boosts everyday efficiency as well: people don’t need to ask around in order to find out if someone on their team is working that day or not.
How can Teamdeck help with absence tracking?
Teamdeck’s core feature is a powerful team calendar, where you can see everyone’s availability, assignments, and timesheets. People who are away on vacation can be quickly spotted.
You also don’t have to worry when assigning longer work assignments to your team members. Days off will be automatically skipped (unless you specify otherwise) and so will bank holidays.
Summarize the data
If you don’t follow an unlimited vacation policy, you need a way to collect the tracked absences and compare them with everyone’s vacation allowance. It could be a simple spreadsheet, or you could summarize data directly in the resource management tool of your choice. Make sure to distinguish between different absence types as not all of them will probably count into the yearly allowance.
Collecting absence-related data can help you better plan your team’s work in the future. Try to identify recurring patterns. Perhaps there are periods when sick leaves are significantly more common. When do people tend to request their longest vacation periods? Such insights are helpful when drafting a production calendar for the months ahead.
How can Teamdeck help with absence tracking?
Teamdeck keeps track of everyone’s time off. Head to the report section and select a Time off report template to generate a report that will answer the following questions for you:
– how many vacation days were taken by your employees?
– which types of absences were taken by particular people?
– how much vacation allowance has everyone left? (You can enter a different allowance for each person if needed).
Ready to improve your team’s absence tracking workflow?
There really is no good reason to stick with time-consuming procedures and rely on outdated forms when it comes to absence tracking. A robust process will help you manage leaves in an efficient and orderly fashion. For additional powers, consider using software that’s been designed to simplify this process. Schedule a call with Aniela to discuss the most efficient employee absence tracking processes for your team. But for those who’re still are not convinced about the right leave management system – let read our article.
