There was a time when employees were required to work for 6 days a week and 12 hours a day. However, it was Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors, who for the first time introduced a 5-day week and granted Saturday & Sunday as a holiday for his employees.
Today, many countries, especially in Europe, are seriously thinking about taking a step further and creating a 4-day working week. Just like Ford, many organisations today also strive hard to create a healthier work-life balance for their employees.
Leaves are the right of every employee. While most organisations grant a weekly 1 or 2 days off to their employees, there are several other occasions too when employees can take a leave from work for a variety of reasons. These leaves are over and above the public holidays declared by the government or the weekly holidays granted by their employers.
While some employers are quite liberal while granting leaves, some are equally stingy. But in either of the cases, it is the job of the concerned HR department to keep a track of the leaves of every individual employee and then arrive at their monthly/annual compensation. No matter what the scale of an organisation, an efficient leave management system is the need of the hour. While every organisation has a well-documented and well-defined employee leave management policy, maintaining the records of every employee’s leaves proves to be a gargantuan task for most HR departments. But why is employee leave management considered such a difficult task? Here are some answers:
- It needs accurate maintenance of leave records
- Leaves must be in accordance with statutory requirements
- Leave Management system must work in sync with Payroll Processes.
- Technology is the key
- Customisation becomes easy
- Processes become automated
- Leave approval becomes easier
- Access to the Leave Management system becomes easy
- Analysis and tracking are easy
