For regular viewers of LeaveMonitor articles, you know that I and my colleagues often talk about the benefits of a robust and secure method for staff to take time off work.
There are so many types of leave, many of which we have discussed in LeaveMonitor articles. It is our genuine hope that those articles help employer and employee alike understand that HR topics, whilst appearing to be a minefield, are in fact rather easy to navigate!
LeaveMonitor offers a wonderful absence management system – bringing businesses and HR departments solidly into the technological 21st Century. Discard your pens and paper! Discard emails that accidently land in junk mail!
Let’s examine why LeaveMonitor’s truly unique absence management system is right for you, your business and your employees.
Reason 1: Control absenteeism and presenteeism
Some of my recent LeaveMonitor articles have discussed just how damaging employee absenteeism and employee presenteeism can be for a business and on an employee’s mental health. Let’s just take a moment to apply what we discussed in those articles to the use of LeaveMonitor’s system.
We discussed a number of reasons for absenteeism, the most common and, arguably the most disruptive, being unauthorised absences. As discussed in my article, there may be a number of reasons for unauthorised absences including bad mental health days or, dare we say it, lying to an employer about an illness after a wild night partying.
With a proper system in place to monitor your staff, and with the right publicity within the office regarding your new system, this will hopefully discourage staff from lying about illness or circumstances as they know for sure their non-attendance will be noticed. However, on a more human note, and giving your staff the benefit of the doubt, should any incidents or sickness occur, our LeaveMonitor absence system will ensure their leave requests are logged and you can prepare for their absence.
In addition, by providing this service, you will also avoid negative employee presenteeism and ensure that your employees are able to take advantage of their legal rights regarding annual leave or any leave-related employee benefits you provide. On the subject of employee wellbeing…
Reason 2: Keep an eye on employee wellbeing
In my article on LeaveMonitor regarding the creation of an employee wellbeing plan, I made the strong statement that a good employee wellbeing programme is a “modern-day expectation rather than an optional set of perks or a superficial document outlining “care” programs”.
My opinion has not changed. We are reaching a point in society where we are beginning to recognise just how much effect poor mental health has on workers. Of course, we are sure you do your best to make your employees comfortable.
However, it is often overlooked to use a proper absence management system. Remember – if a planning system is long-winded, stressful, or involves a number of individuals within the company, an employee may be put off applying for leave. Eventually, this may lead to employee burnout or worse.
By using LeaveMonitor’s absence management system, you avoid unintentionally worsening your general employee wellbeing in the workplace – letting staff take time off when they want it.
Reason 3: Protecting your business
Why does an absence manager help you protect your business? Well, businesses that use and visit LeaveMonitor are unlikely to have the same number of employees as companies such as Facebook, Google or Apple. Thus, it is likely you are a relatively small team.
Every member of a team has a function – we all know that it is something we are taught from a young age (to be a team player). Therefore, when an employee is missing, it is comparable to a machine losing a cog. The whole machine will be less efficient.
However, by keeping track of your absences and understanding employee absenteeism, you actually safeguard your company from falling into panic should an employee take time off. You thus should be able to redistribute work on a temporary basis to other staff members, mitigating the loss of the employee and staying as close as possible to your optimum work output.
Reason 4: Make HR easier
HR isn’t always easy – as mentioned at the outset of this article. Emailing managers, HR staff or other employees complicates taking leave and makes it stressful. It also takes valuable time away from producing actual work. Once those emails are sent and the request finally makes it to the right people…
…someone has to check the employee’s individual allowance, how many days they have left to use, look at timesheets to ensure taking time off doesn’t affect the business drastically, checking records to check the time they take off doesn’t coincide with busy periods of work etc. etc.
Quite stressful – right?
Following a long chain of requests can be annoying for staff, inefficient for the business, unreliable as things get misunderstood and accidently ignored and costly – for HR and the amount of work produced by the employee requesting leave.
LeaveMonitor’s platform ensures that this long-winded process can take no time at all – requests being able to be logged within a few seconds rather than hours. With LeaveMonitor, you may be surprised how you can breathe easy when it comes to HR absence managing.
Reason 5: Tracking the trends
There may be a problem in your company that you are not noticing – LeaveMonitor can help with that. For example, is there a time of the year where sickness rates are particularly high? If so, you may be able to find solutions to keep people apart to avoid the rapid spread of illness in the office – a lesson we all learned during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Or you may notice a certain week or month of the year is hit hard with unplanned absences. Maybe those cold winter months where the weather is miserable, the rain is drizzly and the sun is missing. Perhaps is just one of those days an employee rings in sick to have themselves a sneaky duvet day. Whatever it is – you may be able to introduce reward systems around that week/month to make those figures less daunting for your company, checking if staffing levels change in the right direction and then implementing your changes.
Yes, you could do this by hand. But it is going to take a while – of course. Doing things by pen and paper, emails and word-of-mouth or via the phone is old-fashioned, slow and inefficient. Using LeaveMonitor’s absence management system does all the hard work for you – with the click of a button.
The proof of the pudding… is in the eating!
At the end of the day, I am no business owner, rather, I understand HR and the function it plays in the workplace. I see the value of LeaveMonitor’s absence management system in a business and, I hope, you can see that too.
However, you do not need to take my word for it. LeaveMonitor offers a trial period in which you can see how the system works and how you can make it work for you and your company. With competitive rates and experienced technicians who built the system, I believe you should give LeaveMonitor a go!
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