Employee leave and attendance management systems hold a significant value in an organization’s policy and impact the company’s bottom line.
Leave management involves a complex web of internal policies, rules, workflow, authorities, state regulations, etc. Many additional aspects such as managing employee records, compliance with policies, processing leave application workflows, add to the complexity of employee leave and attendance management.
Many organizations fail to realize the importance of a leave and attendance management system and this can even damage the reputation of an organization. Automating the employee and leave management system has surely reduced many pitfalls and lifted the burden off HR managers.
What is a Leave & Attendance Management System?
Leave and attendance management system tracks employee working hours to document the time your employee works in your organisation. Employee leave and attendance management system automates the entire leave request workflow, making it seamless for the employees and employers. The software typically includes all the measures required for leave management such as leave application, approval/rejection, managing balance, etc.
A robust employee leave management system should simplify the entire process of employee leaves and ensure smooth functioning. An effective leave management system should include the following,
- Paperless functionalities
- Eliminate manual intervention
- Effective communication
- Real-time data visibility
- Maintain legal compliance
- Reflect organization’s values
To the employees, nothing is more upsetting than someone messing with their leave balance. Leave management is very sensitive and your HR should be well equipped to handle different kinds of challenges related to it.
Need for Attendance Management System
Tracking the attendance of employees is very essential for the company’s reliability, profitability, and overall reputation. A robust attendance management system encompasses the following aspects:
Smooth Functioning
The absence of a team member can lead to coordination issues, delays, mismanagement, increased workload, etc. If it happens several times, the impact of absence keeps on adding up.
Discipline
Lack of discipline leads to delays, unpredictability, variability of quality, and delivery. It influences other members to adopt bad habits and further complicates the issue.
Overtime
Many organizations such as hospitals, factories, etc operate multiple shifts. Moreover, high production demand may require people to work beyond regular working hours. Tracking systems should be equipped to manage overtime for higher employee satisfaction.
Compliance
Attendance data is also required for various compliance reports. These reports assess the working hours, overtime hours, and the number of days present or absent.
What are the Major Challenges faced by HR in LMS (Leave & Attendance Management System)?
HR teams face several challenges in employee leave and attendance management. HR professionals need to balance business functions along with maintaining employee satisfaction.
Challenge 1: Employees are uninformed about leave policies and their leave balance.
The HR department receives a lot of queries related to employee leave balance. It is time-consuming and shifts the focus of HR managers from important core responsibilities. Employees do not appreciate waiting to know their leave balance and to access their leave and attendance records.
Moreover, being uninformed about changes in leave policies gives employees a sense of dissatisfaction. A repeated pattern of delays and miscommunication increases frustration amongst employees.
Challenge 2: Line Managers are unable to manage leaves and approvals timely.
Managers often face difficulties in the process of approving the leaves of team members. They are not able to identify patterns when the leave policy is misused by employees hence, they struggle to make well-informed decisions on approval/rejection of leaves.
Challenge 3: Undocumented leave transactions leading to increased payroll errors.
Paid leaves significantly impact a company’s bottom line. Leave without pay (LWP) is a type of leave that may cause payroll errors if they are not properly tracked. HR professionals struggle to manage transactional load and reduce errors in calculating LWP and paid leaves availed by an employee.
Challenge 4: Keeping track of accrued leaves.
Accrued leaves are given to an employee based on the date of their joining. For instance, if an employee joins in June they will get 12 leaves and if an employee joins in November, then they get 5 leaves for that fiscal year.
HR managers struggle to keep track of accrued leaves in leave management. Moreover, they also need to keep track of leftover paid leaves from the previous year. Manual tracking is prone to errors and extremely time-consuming. HR managers must look for sustainable alternatives and automate the entire process.
Challenge 5: Managing leave compliance.
Compliance with leave management involves various laws related to paid leaves, compensatory leaves, and restricted holidays. Maternal and paternal leaves form an integral part of an organization’s leave policy. Family medical leave and personal emergency leaves are also subject to the law.
Every organization needs to comply with these laws. If you end up breaking the law, it can lead to fines, loss of trust and can ruin the reputation of your company.
How Poor Leave & Attendance Management System Can Affect Business?
Traditionally punch cards were used and now biometric systems or access cards are utilized to manage employee attendance. It is important to maintain a seamless record of the exact check-in and check-out time of each employee.
Manual timekeeping takes a toll on employee productivity and morality, additionally, it is quite time-consuming. Additionally filling out timesheets and submitting them weekly or monthly will lead to tampering of data and inaccuracies. Manual systems are outdated and it will surely drive your HR team crazy!
Even popularly used tools such as Google forms have proven to be ineffective while handling leave management issues.
A reliable leave and attendance management system saves your organization from compliance issues, payroll errors, etc. You save on time, resources, maintain accurate attendance records, and eliminate chances of error.
Make Leave & Attendance Management System a Priority (Solutions)
A Leave Management system (LMS) automates the leave request process, making the process seamless and hassle-free for employees and managers. A good leave management system will cover leave applications, approval/rejection, managing leave balance, etc
A robust and well-designed LMS will consist of the following features:
Unified Dashboard
Employees can check their leave balance, co-workers’ day off while applying for a leave. HR managers and supervisors have access to employee leave balance, holiday lists, schedules, to better evaluate leave requests.
Cloud-based System
A cloud-based system will eliminate the need to install software and updates. It will offer multi-channel and all-time access to all the concerned members of an organization. Employees can apply, approve, reject, edit leaves from anywhere.
Auto-update Leave Balance
It gets difficult to manually manage leave balance and update it for all the employees. An LMS is not very effective if your HR manager has to update leaves manually. Hence auto-updating leave balance is a must. Your system should show the leave history to the concerned employee and their supervisor.
Ease of Reporting
A good LMS system should include a built-in reporting module that creates interacting reports based on employee performance and history. This helps managers analyze patterns and acquire actionable insights.
Seamless Integration
Your LMS should offer you seamless integration with other software used for payroll, pre-existing timesheets, etc to save on time and eliminate errors. Your software should not create data silos further complicating leave management.
Configurable Fields
A stringent system with a ‘one size fits all’ approach will not suit your organization’s needs. The product should allow your staff to customize fields to fit your company’s policies.
Manual systems are outdated, it is high time that organizations shift to automated Leave Management Systems (LMS). It is time to find an LMS that lets you hover over the fields instead of tripping over them. Automated LMS have many benefits and organizations must shift from manual to automatic management systems immediately.
Take charge of your employee leave and attendance management system with the help of TopSource Worldwide. The company aims at automating the process, saving time, reducing payroll errors, and adopting a straightforward approach to handle leave requests. A good Leave and attendance management system create a better HR management experience.
Several organizations across the globe use TopSource Worldwide to streamline their leave management systems. It offers all the benefits and solutions that can make leave management hassle-free and seamless for your organization. It relieves your HR managers from additional workload and loss of productivity.
The company aims to create fully customizable leave policies which lead to minimal leaves related queries from employees. The firm is proficient at automating leave lapse, encashment, carry-forward, etc for all employees in alliance with the leave policy. Year-end reporting is also made easy, which means no more extra work for your HR managers. With TopSource Worldwide, managing employee leave and attendance becomes effortless, it benefits the employers and employees both.
Book a free consultation with TopSource Worldwide today!
