From excessive sick leave to last minute holiday requests, employee absence can have a negative and costly impact on your business. 

In fact, high levels of employee absence can cost businesses thousands of pounds every year – costs that most companies can’t afford, especially in today’s climate.

Having clear and accessible policies in place is a great starting point. It ensures your staff understand the company’s rules around absence and what is expected of them when it comes to taking time off.

But having these policies in place will only get you so far. If you really want to get the most out of your absence procedures, the next logical step is to adopt a robust absence management tool.

The Benefits of Absence Management Software

Managing your employee absences entails a lot more than simply saying ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ when they request time off.

From administration and compliance to supporting returns to work and reporting, absence management can quickly become an unnecessary uphill battle.

By consolidating all of your absence management tasks into one easy-to-use solution, you can save valuable time for other HR tasks while feeling confident that your company’s leave is being well taken care of.

Streamline Everyday HR Processes

Any manual process is sure to add time, inconsistency and room for human error – and managing employee absences is no exception!

By implementing an absence management system, you’ll transform and completely streamline this process. Your staff will be able to securely access your company calendar from any device and be able to view their remaining holiday, existing bookings and submit new leave requests in just a few clicks.

Moreover, migrating your absence management process onto a software solution will provide absence approvers with an automated means of keeping track of these requests.

New submissions from staff will trigger alerts including all the information managers need in order to decide whether to approve the leave or not. For instance, you may wish to determine the total number of people allowed off at one time across the company or in specific departments or staff groups and have the system notify you if a holiday request will exceed these limitations.

These alerts will send the approver straight to the leave request where they can approve or reject it in seconds – automatically notifying the employee with the decision made and updating their remaining holiday balance in the process!

You can even configure notification settings to let other users know when an absence has been booked or processed, so that everyone is kept in the loop about new absences being added to the calendar.

Look After Your Team’s Wellbeing

A 2018 study conducted by the Mental Health Foundation found that a staggering 74% of workers felt so stressed at work that they were overwhelmed or unable to cope. In fact, figures suggest that stress in one of the biggest causes of unauthorised sickness in the workplace.

This is because staff end up working themselves into the ground, to the point where they have no choice but to take sick leave – which has a worse impact on your business’ bottom line since you then have to find cover at short notice. And when these unplanned absences begin to recur, the cost to your business increases rapidly.

Manage employee absences and look after employee wellbeing.

There are plenty of things that you can do to support your staff in the workplace, but one of the most effective ways to combat work related stress is to encourage booking time off, and make it simple for them to do so. When you make it easy for your staff to book time off, they are more likely to take holiday when they need it.

Plus More Benefits…

There are so many benefits to adopting an absence management software, but we’d be here all day if we discussed them all! Some other reasons to use an absence management system include:

  • Reduce absenteeism – if your staff know that you are monitoring and reporting on their absence trends then they may just think twice about pulling a sickie.
  • Be more prepared for unexpected absences – having an absence management system in place will allow you to stay on top of these types of absences and help to ensure that your team isn’t overworked when you’re short staffed.
  • Understand you metrics – being able to run comprehensive reports at the push of a button will help to understand what’s going on in your business at all times, helping you to understand where your processes are working or if you need to make improvements in certain areas.
  • Staff feel more valued – most absence management systems provide staff with the ability to be more autonomous, meaning that they’ll likely feel more valued because they are being trusted with their own holiday management – ultimately leading to greater productivity and a reduction in staff turnover.
  • Setup reminders – keep yourself in the loop and receive regular reminders to show how much holiday your staff have to take before your holiday period is over and save a bottle neck of requests at the end of the year.

Managing Employee Absences is Easy with Staff Squared Now

Using an online HR software removes a lot of the stress of not knowing where staff are, what their record of attendance is, and how your business is impacted. When you manage employee absences well, this translates into better performance, better customer service, and better profitability.

Customise Absence Management Settings

First thing’s first – configure your company settings to optimise your absence management process with Staff Squared.

  • Create custom absence types – staff can book time off for specific reasons – doctors appointments, parental leave or a birthday allowance as a few examples – and you can decide whether these absence types will deduct from holiday allowance to make keeping track of absences much simpler.
  • Define your own absence limits – determine how many staff can be absent at any one time, either by department or by staff group – even create custom staff groups which prevent specific staff members from taking leave at the same time.
  • Specify custom absence limits – set limits for each custom absence type to determine how many instances of the absence type you allow per employee per holiday year and how many consecutive days you allow to be taken for that absence type.
  • Block dates in your company calendar – create custom rules that advise staff of periods when they are not allowed to book leave – whether it be a review week or just a busy time of the year, your staff will be notified if they’re trying to book off time when the company will not allow it, and their holiday approver will also be notified where leave is requested across these dates.
  • Define sickness limits – configure emails whenever staff exceed your company’s sick leave limit.
  • Set holiday approvers – line managers and admin users will be notified of all absence activity by default. But you can also assign other users to receive these notifications and process leave requests.
  • Manage your absence notifications – choose who you receive absence notifications for, filter out alerts for non-direct reports and configure alerts for when another approver processes a leave request.
  • Block requests that exceed holiday allowance – allow staff to request holiday that will put their remaining holiday balance into a negative figure or block these requests to stop them from being submitted.
  • Determine what staff can see on their calendar – show staff all absences and events in your company calendar or restrict their view to only show their own entries.
  • Configure daily and weekly emails – get regular notifications straight to your inbox to see when people will be off work.

Staff Submit a Request

Once your account is configured, all that’s left is for your staff to start utilising the system!

The process couldn’t be more simple – staff just need to access the company calendar to submit a new absence request where they can choose between:

  • Holiday
  • Sickness
  • Custom absence
  • Remote working

They’ll be prompted to enter the details of their absence, with the option to include notes if needed. Where a sickness is being reported, they will also have the choice of recording an ongoing absence if they aren’t sure when they will return.

Then the employee simply needs to submit their request for approval.

Absence Approvers Process the Request

The employee’s holiday approver will receive an email and dashboard notification to advise them of the new pending absence, and all that’s left to do is for them to process the request!

The employee will then be notified of the response and their holiday allowance is updated automatically according to the absence type and rules.

Access the Staff Squared portal from wherever you are with our mobile app, making the way you manage employee absences much easier and more accessible.