Use It or Lose It: Accurately Tracking Paid Time off is the Key

Employees want their paid time off. For many companies, the success of a flexible paid leave program depends on whether the program is efficiently managed and accurately tracked.

The Lure of Paid Leave

As today’s work schedules become more flexible, many employers now offer paid leave plans to employees as a way of combining personal time, vacation, holiday, floating holidays, and other paid leave. 

Typically, an eligible employee receives a certain number of days of paid time off, which may be used at his or her discretion. Once the days have been used, any additional time off is taken without pay as stipulated by the organization.

In many cases, paid time off is a “use it or lose it” proposition, with balances zeroing out at the end of the calendar year.

An Administrative Challenge

When complex leave programs are administered manually, it is costly and cumbersome to monitor eligibility, leave requests, approvals, remaining leave balances, and enforce leave policies fairly and accurately.

With a manual system, supervisors are often unable to respond to leave requests in a timely manner due to complex eligibility and entitlement policies, which could result in unexcused absences.

Many employers fail to recognize how much of their total HR expense pertains to leave-related programs—and how much ability they have to manage these costs.

Automating Leave Management

A new breed of technology solutions automate employee time off requests, eliminating the paperwork and communicating essential information to both the manager and the employee.

How does it work?

• An employee checks whether other employees are already scheduled off, then requests time off online through their web browser.
• An email notifies the supervisor of a pending leave request. The supervisor’s dashboard also indicates a pending request.
• In an instant, supervisors see factors that affect their approval decision, like the amount of time off allocated to the employee or other employees taking the same day off.
• The supervisor approves the request with a single click.
• The employee sees an approval message and is automatically scheduled for the time off.

A Clear Advantage

The advantages of improved leave management include lower total costs, streamlined operations, fair application of paid leave policies and a more productive workforce.

This new approach puts the power in an employees hands to view time earned, time taken and remaining balances of paid time off. That means employees can manage this process without asking for HR assistance and both can be confident that employees are taking their allotted paid time off.