How to Automate Leave Management for Busy HR Teams

If you’re a human resources professional, then it may not surprise you that employee leaves of absence are on the rise. ComPsych reports a 30% increase over five years, with a 300% increase due specifically to mental health leave.

Handling so many leave requests — and keeping up with leave laws — can overwhelm your HR team, leading you to consider expanding your team or outsourcing. But what if there were a way to automate leave management without adding to your headcount?

Here’s how you can use automated leave management software to save time, reduce your administrative burden, and minimize compliance risks.

Why Automate Leave Management?

As leave of absence requests increase, relying on manual processes isn’t just a hassle — it can hold you back from business growth. Automated workflows allow you to save time and streamline processes, providing a better experience for employees and HR team members alike. Here are three reasons to automate leave management now:

Compliance Risks Are Increasing

Some leave laws, like the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), have been around for decades; others, including many state laws, are brand new. HR teams need to comply with state and federal leave laws and handle multiple types of leave, and traditional calendars and spreadsheets just aren’t up to the task.

Automated leave management systems address this problem by using custom rule engines that automatically verify compliance during the leave approval process. In addition to leave laws, they can also take your own company leave policies into account.

Time-Off Requests Are Time-Consuming

Processing time-off requests manually may work for small teams, but as your company grows and handles a broader range of leave types, it can present a real administrative burden. By automating tasks in your leave approval workflow, you can save time and reduce the risk of human error.

Pulpstream’s leave of absence automation tools do precisely that, turning an hours-long process into one that can take as little as 15 minutes. This frees up your HR team to focus on strategic matters, like employee engagement and workforce management.

Employees Want a User-Friendly Experience

Employees can do their banking, book doctor’s appointments, and even plan their vacations online — why can’t they have the same user-friendly experience at the office? If they can’t easily navigate the leave process, they’re more likely to experience burnout, exhibit chronic absenteeism, or take longer to return to work.

By using an automated leave management system, you can eliminate endless email chains and stop relying on Slack notifications to plan leave. Use modern HR tech to improve the employee experience and reduce turnover at your organization.

What Can You Automate Using HR Systems?

Automating leave management doesn’t mean you’ll never have to manually approve an employee’s sick leave ever again — but it does mean you’ll get an assist from your HR management platform throughout the process. Let’s take a look at three things you can do with automation to improve your HR systems and optimize your workflows:

Confirm Eligibility

Assessing leave eligibility is one of the most challenging parts of the leave management process. Say an employee wants to take a leave of absence for mental health under FMLA. Is your organization a covered employer? Have they worked at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months preceding the leave? Do they have an ongoing condition?

Add the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), state leave laws, and company leave policies, and it can take hours to confirm an employee’s eligibility for leave.

Pulpstream’s custom rule engine automatically verifies eligibility for multiple types of leave in one place. It can help you navigate the ADA interactive process, generate FMLA forms, and send you a reminder when it’s time for FMLA recertification.

Track Leave Balances

Another time-consuming part of the process is leave tracking: keeping track of the time an employee has taken off work and how much more leave they have remaining. Some types of leave are calculated on a rolling basis — for example, under FMLA, employees can take 12 weeks of leave in a 12-month period.

You may also need to calculate leave accruals, such as paid sick leave or paid time off (PTO), which are increasingly mandatory in some states.

When you use automated leave management software, you can automatically record the start and end dates for each leave period, track continuous vs. intermittent leave, and even coordinate leaves of absence with performance management.

Streamline Payroll Calculations

What does payroll have to do with leave management? Whenever an employee takes a leave of absence, it can complicate payroll, because you need to account for their time away from work, even if they took it in multiple increments. Manually recording each leave of absence is a recipe for payroll mistakes that you’ll need to fix later.

With automated leave management, you can link your employee attendance data right into your payroll system. Account for paid leave, calculate accrued sick time, and even handle workers’ comp and disability insurance all in one place. 

Get Ready to Automate Leave Management

Automating leave management is a must for any growing organization; it allows you to scale up without outsourcing or expanding your HR team. Plus, when you can anticipate upcoming absences, you’ll have fewer staffing issues to contend with.

You’ll know it’s time to automate leave management when you’re experiencing any of the following issues:

• Leave approvals are delayed.
• Employees are complaining.
• You suspect FMLA fraud or abuse.
• You’ve made mistakes in payroll or FMLA compliance.

Pulpstream helps you automate leave management with these core features:

• Employee attendance tracker: Log hours with built-in time tracking, including geotagged attendance for field workers and distributed teams.
• Employee self-service portal: Empower employees to manage leave requests from their desktop or mobile device and upload supporting documents.
• Real-time reporting dashboards: Analyze attendance and leave data to identify performance issues and prevent leave-of-absence abuse.

Pulpstream’s secure, cloud-based platform allows you to keep your employee data safe while leveraging the power of analytics to address staffing and performance issues.

It also offers integrations with existing tools — like your human resources management system (HRIS) — to create seamless workflows. By providing a user-friendly employee experience, you’ll increase retention throughout the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to offboarding.

Automate Leave Management With Pulpstream

Leave management is one of the biggest responsibilities for your HR team. Not only do you have state and federal leave laws to comply with, but you may be facing employee engagement issues, such as low morale or burnout. Automating time off management allows you to process leave requests faster and reduces the risk of human error.

It’s all too easy to view employee leave as an inconvenience that impacts your staffing and productivity. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to show employees that you value their well-being and will do what it takes to maintain an effective workforce.

Pulpstream’s business process automation platform is the go-to solution for your leave management issues. With its cost-effective pricing and extensive integrations, it won’t take long for you to see the ROI of HR technology in the modern workplace. Request a demo today to see how Pulpstream can kickstart your digital transformation.