Why Modern Businesses Need Digital Leave Tracking

Knowing when your employees will be on leave, and how much of each leave type they have remaining, is key to maintaining a productive workforce. But manual leave tracking methods — such as email, spreadsheets, and shared calendars — just aren’t cut out for the complexity of modern leave tracking.

Tracking employee leave manually isn’t just hard work for your HR team. It’s a recipe for scheduling conflicts and compliance issues.

Here’s why digital leave tracking is so much more effective — and how to digitize your leave of absence (LoA) process with leave management software like Pulpstream.

What Is Digital Leave Tracking?

Digital leave tracking is a way of managing employee leave requests with the aid of modern tools, such as mobile devices, cloud-based calendars, and automated leave management systems. These tools enable you to streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and stay compliant with multiple types of leave policies.

Using a leave of absence management platform doesn’t just save your team time and money. It also empowers employees to request time off using a self-service portal and view their own annual leave balance, accruals, and carry-overs in real time.

These days, employees don’t want to wait for your HR team to get back to them — and instant responses via digital platforms can improve employee satisfaction. Digital leave tracking systems make that possible with automation.

The Problems With Manual Leave Tracking

Manual leave tracking was once the default approach to employee leave — especially for small businesses that weren’t covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) or by state laws. But as leave laws become more complex, it can be hard to keep up with leave laws without switching to digital leave tracking systems.

Here’s the problem with traditional leave tracking methods, and why it’s time to replace them with up-to-date alternatives.

Spreadsheets

Excel spreadsheets have their place, but for the most part, spreadsheets are too clunky for dealing with employee leave. It’s easy to make manual errors when entering dates and other details, and it’s hard to get a real-time view of what’s going on.

Plus, if you track leave for multiple employees using the same spreadsheet, you might end up inadvertently breaching FMLA confidentiality requirements by sharing too much information about an employee’s reason for leave.

Email Threads

Email threads can be a useful way to keep a record of employee absences, especially if you incorporate them into your leave approval workflow.

But email chains can quickly get unwieldy, and you run into the same concerns about confidentiality. It only takes one click to forward an email to the wrong person, and it’s easy for an employee’s time-off request to get lost in a messy inbox. 

Calendars

Calendars are an indispensable tool for time-off management. They allow managers to visualize an employee’s days off and minimize the risk of scheduling conflicts.

But while cloud-based tools like Google Calendar are a step up from paper calendars, they don’t have the same functionality as a digital leave tracker. They don’t show an employee’s total leave entitlement and don’t work well for general time tracking.

3 Benefits of Digital Leave Tracking for Employees

Digital leave tracking has benefits for both employees and employers. For employees, it takes the hassle out of calling up their human resources team to submit a leave request or check their remaining leave balance. It also means less time filling out paperwork by hand, since they can use software to pre-fill FMLA forms and collect e-signatures.

Here are just a few more benefits for employees.

1. Alerts and Notifications

When you use a platform like Pulpstream to manage leave, employees get instant alerts whenever there’s an update on their case or they need to take action. Maybe they need to obtain a medical certification for FMLA leave or provide a return-to-work update. Either way, Pulpstream automatically sends them an email or SMS notification, ensuring that they stay informed about their case and you stay compliant.

2. Self-Service Portal

Many leave management systems come with an employee self-service portal — a user-friendly interface that employees can access online or via a mobile app. For example, Pulpstream’s portal is available on both iOS and Android devices.

A self-service portal allows employees to log in to check their remaining sick leave, paid time off (PTO), and vacation days, simplifying FMLA leave and PTO tracking. Plus, they can upload documents securely, helping you comply with FMLA confidentiality rules.

3. Integrations

Digital leave tracking tools can serve as an all-in-one time tracker, vacation tracker, and employee attendance tracker by integrating with other software. Pulpstream integrates with payroll automation software like ADP, scheduling tools like Workday, as well as shared digital workspaces like Slack, Microsoft, Outlook, and Google Calendar.

By simplifying the LoA process, you’ll make it easier for employees to get the time off they need — and are entitled to — and improve employee engagement.

3 Benefits of Digital Leave Tracking for HR Teams

Effective leave tracking is a must for HR compliance — and manual leave tracking can quickly become a headache for HR teams. Leave administrators need to keep up with state and federal laws, generate FMLA designation notices, and manage the return-to-work process — all while keeping their employees happy.

Here are three ways that digital leave tracking can make a difference.

1. Built-In Rules

Digital leave tracking makes it easy to comply with leave laws by automatically verifying eligibility using a custom rule engine. For example, confirm that an employee has been employed for long enough to qualify for FMLA leave entitlements and meets other qualifying criteria even before a member of your HR team reviews the request.

Pulpstream’s built-in rule engine is powerful enough to account for multiple leave laws at the state and federal level — and your company’s own personal leave policy.

2. Real-Time Dashboard

Get real-time insights into your employees’ leave patterns with an intuitive, user-friendly dashboard. Instead of having to compile reports by hand, Pulpstream does all the work for you, helping to reduce absenteeism and avoid FMLA abuse.

Our detailed dashboard helps you identify excessive or inconsistent leave requests, or monitor broader attendance patterns by leave duration or leave type.

3. Documentation

Keeping records of employee leave requests — whether approved or denied — serves to protect you if an employee accuses you of discrimination or retaliation. This includes FMLA certifications, fitness-for-duty certifications, and other documents showing that you did your due diligence when assessing an employee’s eligibility for leave.

Documentation also has a role to play in the employee onboarding process, informing employees about their rights and obligations as outlined in your employee handbook. With digital leave tracking, you and your employees can work together to ensure a successful outcome that meets your obligations under employment law.

Digitize Leave Tracking With Pulpstream

Manual leave tracking — with emails, spreadsheets, and calendars — is outdated and leaves too much room for human error. Digital leave tracking tools streamline the LoA process for employees and approvers alike by automating key steps and integrating with other digital tools, like time-tracking and scheduling software.

Pulpstream’s leave tracking software is available for iOS and Android devices, and it integrates with other HR tools like ADP and Workday. Plus, it features an employee self-service portal for submitting leave requests and a cloud-based dashboard so your HR team can see attendance patterns in real time.

Pulpstream’s interface digitizes leave management from start to finish — from initial request to the return-to-work process. Get a demo today to see how!