Leave management is one of the integral human resource functions of a company, be it large business houses or small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Leave management helps the HR department of a company to keep track of the employees’ leave of absence, which holds due importance from various perspectives. To start with, an employee’s reporting manager can assign work responsibilities to other employees for the leave duration so that the business operations run smoothly. This also leads to developing healthy cordial employer-employee relationships due to adequate handling of employee absenteeism.
Leave management also plays a significant role in payroll with the finance department tracking the current leave balance of employees with respect to the leave taken in a particular month for accurate dissemination of salary.
The traditional leave management process followed by organizations is tedious and time-consuming wherein the employees apply for leave either through a written leave application or an email sent to their reporting manager. The reporting manager faces problems in approving the leave in the absence of other essential details such as the number of leave taken by the particular employee in the past and how many of his team members will be on leave in the given duration.
The process becomes all the more tedious in cases, when the leave application has to be approved by more than one reporting manager. The leave details are often stored in an excel spreadsheet on the computer system where the chances of duplication and resulting errors are high.
With the advancement in the sphere of software technology, the traditional procedure of leave management has given way to the use of leave application software. It is an easy tool for leave management for both, the employees as well as their reporting managers. Leave management software results in saving efforts as well as time, leading to higher productivity and efficiency of the employees.
The leave application software offers ample benefits to the human resource and finance departments of a company as well as the employees in effectively managing their leave records. The software provides the HR department with accurate leave details of the employees, which cover their current leave balance with respect to the different types of leave such as sick leave, casual leave, maternity leave and earned leave, the number of leave they have availed in a particular month, as well as the approval or rejection status of the leave applied for. The software furnishes the leave details of the particular employee availing leave to the reporting manager, which helps him in approving or rejecting the leave in question.
The leave application software allows tracking of the employees’ leave history, which reveals the frequency at which the particular employee avails leave. It results in saving the time of the human resource employees as all the leave information will be visible to the employees and the HR department is not required to respond to their leave queries.
The leave management software also allows the leave data stored in excel spreadsheets on a computer to be imported and integrated with the primary data.
It is required that leave management data is synchronized and integrated with attendance management data. Hence, the finance department is able to process salaries accurately by having access to the complete employee leave information with regard to the leave taken by the employee and his available leave balance, resulting in deductions.
The leave management software only accepts those leave requests that are in accordance with the leave policy specified by the company, thus ensuring 100 percent compliance to the leave policy. With all the employee leave details stored in the software, the chances of making mistakes are minimized.
The leave software also offers multiple benefits to the employees. It gives the employees the flexibility to apply for leave at any time of the day within the confines of their homes. The software lends transparency to the whole system of leave management, which can be accessed by the employees any time they want to and know their leave details.
The leave software also notifies the employees about the status of their leave applications, accumulated leave balance, and leave approvals through email notifications.
Upgrading to automated, cloud-based leave application software makes it simpler to implement your leave policies as well as manage employee leave database online.