Holiday and leave management is an important aspect of any company, big or small. While it may seem like an easy task, it is so much more than simply looking at a timesheet. For example, you may need to differentiate between different types of time off, such as vacation time, personal leave, maternity leave, medical leave, and sabbatical. Or, you may need to track vacations, leave, and paid holidays for employees in different countries. This means you’ll need separate Paid Time Off (PTO) policies for each location to keep all employee and time-off-related data in one system. If that isn’t enough to make your head spin, you’ll also need to set leave quotas, manage auto-approvals, manage rollovers, and so much more.
Before getting into more detail, here is a breakdown of the different types of leave management policies. Keep in mind that rules regarding these policies vary from company to company.
- Accrued days: Days off an employee is allowed to take are directly proportional to the number of days the employee has worked.
- Bank of PTO: Employees are offered a fixed number of PTO days all at once. It typically resets on January 1st or on the date they started working. With this policy, there is no separation between categories i.e. vacation, sick leave, holiday.
- Unlimited PTO: Employees can take time off whenever they need to as long as they complete their work on time.
- Time Off in Lieu (TOIL): Employees earn their time off based on their overtime work instead of getting paid for those hours.
PTO Management Made Easy
Fortunately, project management software can assist in reporting employees’ work time and managing absences. Managers will be free to focus on other responsibilities, such as supporting employees, providing training, and improving team processes. It also has various benefits for all the employees, such as simplifying the time-off request process and making it easy to see who’s in the office and who has a day off.
New to Nutcache:
Recently implemented, the holiday and leave management feature allows you to automate PTO calculation and manage holidays in your company. With a straightforward setup, you have easy access to employee leave requests, employee absence history, calculations, and more. You can also:
Create Types of Leaves
With Nutcache, creating a type of leave is easy. Under the Company menu, simply click on the + Leave at the top left of the screen, name the leave i.e. bereavement leave, and assign the amount of time for that leave i.e. 24 hours.
To add specific members, click on the toggle button, then on the Assign members link. You can then add the desired members.
Request Time Off
Team members that are added can request time off. Once the request is submitted through the timesheet, managers or the person responsible for approving that request will get an email notification to approve or deny the request.
Once a request is approved or rejected, the person who has requested the time off will also receive an email.
Manage Time Off
A team member can view their own balance history, while admins have access to everyone’s:
- Accrued – number of days or hours a person received
- Used – number of days or hours a person has already used
- Available – number days or hours a person has left to request off
Holiday Scheduling
Do you have teams spread out in different countries? Or clients in different geographical locations and employees who work according to their clients’ shift? Managing time off during the holidays for an entire workforce can be challenging. Some employees earn paid-time-off, while others earn incentives for working holidays, like getting paid time and a half. Other companies may schedule a blackout to ensure everything runs smoothly through a high-volume holiday period. Thankfully, with the holiday management feature, you can take some stress out of the holidays.
For example, you can create a holiday group Holidays – Canada, for all team members who share the same holidays during the year.
To create a holiday group, click on + Holiday group. To add specific members, click on the toggle button, then on the Assign members link.
Benefits of Automated Leave/Holiday Requests:
- Saves time: Constantly checking if there is enough staff for an upcoming project is inefficient and time-consuming. Why lose precious time sending emails through the hierarchical chain regarding leave requests? Or waiting days or even weeks for an answer? With PTO management software you can see your team’s availability all in one place. Employees can also view the time they booked off or have already taken through the year as well as check their remaining balance without having to get in touch with their manager.
- Minimizes the risk of errors: Not only will software save you time, but it will also minimize the risk of human error in calculating employees’ working time. Mistakes in vacation/leave tracking can lead to errors in payments, leave clashes, and conflicts. A time-off calendar allows employees to manage their time-off requests and history, thus reducing the number of repetitive tasks that need to be performed. At the same time, mistakes like exceeded leave balances, overlaps, and requesting time off on a public holiday will become a thing of the past.
- Helps prevent confusion: From small businesses to major corporations, an ineffective leave management process at a place of work will ultimately lead to confusion. Ultimately, rules concerning vacation will be broken whether by accident or because of an overlook. Without a transparent system, employees won’t know if every one of them has the same amount of free days to take, some taking a day off every week while others working overtime. This can lead to disorder or quarrels, which could affect the project’s delivery.
- Avoids understaffing: Subpar leave management can lead to a shortage of employees when your company needs them most. The person in charge of approval has access to the employee’s leave balance and team calendar. Therefore, they can take an informed decision about approving or denying the request.
- Keeps staff happy: Everyone needs a break! Unfortunately, so many people leave accrued days off unused out of fear of looking bad. A straightforward, digital process will do away with the pressure of having to ask for time off face-to-face, ensuring employees use their days off to travel, spend time with family, and relax.
Ready for a vacation?
If you don’t have the tools to track attendance and absence, you may not know how many vacation days a year your employees are taking and how much that is affecting your business. If you’re already using Nutcache to log work hours, you can also use it for leaves & holiday management. In doing so, you’ll have everyone’s data in one place, making it easy to track both work time and time off.
