What is Leave of Absence?
A leave of absence is an extended period of time off work that a professional may request for a variety of reasons.
Just like any leave policy that your business may offer, employees need to consult with their managers before taking leaves of absence.
These periods can also be either paid or unpaid, depending on the reason why they’re being used. So far, a leave of absence sounds exactly like a standard leave policy.
However, the two differ in a couple of major ways.
Leave of absence vs standard time off policies
One of the main differences between a leave of absence and a traditional leave policy is the purpose of the time off.
People may take their regular PTO to go on vacation or spend time on their hobbies. A leave of absence, on the other hand, typically has a more important purpose.
These usually cover circumstances that a person cannot account for. We’ll explore a few examples a bit later in this guide.
Another major difference between a leave of absence and a traditional leave policy is the length.
Depending on your location, your business probably offers around four weeks of vacation time to your staff for each calendar year.
Leaves of absence, meanwhile, can require much longer uninterrupted periods.
How long can a leave of absence last?
A typical leave of absence will last for weeks. However, some common examples like parental leave may require several months of time off.
The exact timeframes will depend heavily on your local labor laws. Regulations will also dictate what purposes you may need to offer leaves of absence for.
If you wish to have additional policies that are not required by law, you can offer as much time off as you wish.
Speaking of which, let’s now cover a few different variations of leave of absence policies.
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Different Leave of Absence Policy Variations
As already mentioned, there are two main types of leave of absence policies: mandatory and optional ones.
Leave of absence policies required by law
Countries across the globe mandate leaves of absence for a variety of purposes. A popular example of this is parental leave, which commonly requires several months of time off for new parents.
Voluntary leave of absence policies
Besides the policies mandated by law, you can also offer additional leave of absence policies as employee benefits. A good example of this is bereavement leave.
Through such policies, you can show your support to grieving staff, making them feel more appreciated. In turn, these will help you attract better talent to your firm.
Common Leave of Absence Policy Examples
Let’s now explore a few common leave of absence policies that you may offer to your staff. These include:
- Military Leave: used when an employee gets called into active service.
- Parental Leave: used for employees expecting a newborn child.
- Medical Leave: used for employees who are experiencing medical issues or need to take care of family members with severe illnesses.
- Bereavement Leave: used when an employee suffers a loss in their family and needs time to recover and grieve.
Why Leave of Absence Management for Employers Is Important
Having covered the basics of the concept, let’s now shift our focus to managing employee absences.
There are two main absence management strategies for employers: manual and with dedicated software.
As you might imagine, managing absences manually can be a tedious task. More importantly, it’s more prone to errors and misuse.
Your management staff will have a harder time keeping track of key details like leave balances.
Managing employee absences with dedicated software, however, can solve these problems pretty much completely.
Benefits of tracking leave of absence with software
Various pieces of software offer a better way of leave tracking for HR teams.
Besides dedicated HRM suites, you can also use productivity tools like time trackers for this purpose.
Apps like WebWork allow you to manage absences across your team in a centralized place.
What this will enable your team to do is to stay organized. Your employees will be able to plan for upcoming absences more effectively.
They can prioritize their work in a way that eliminates dependencies from soon-to-be absent staff.
Typically, planning around absences won’t be the difference between your business failing or succeeding.
However, especially when dealing with longer-term leaves of absence, it can help your team maintain their productivity—without slowing down.
That said, if your business operates around the clock with the help of a Shift Scheduling tool, planning around long-term absences may have a more significant impact.
Another benefit of using an employee leave of absence tracker relates to the number of errors you’re likely to make.
Automating leave tracking processes makes them less prone to data entry errors. When mistakes like these do take place, however,
they’re easier to catch and correct with leave of absence tracking software.
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Are you looking for software to track staff leave at your business? Book a demo with our success specialists and they’ll show you why WebWork is the app you’re looking for.
How to Use Leave of Absence Tracking Software: Step-by-Step
Finally, let’s explore how you can use leave of absence tracking software in your business. We’ll cover the process step-by-step, starting with choosing a leave of absence tracker.
Choose a leave of absence tracker
First, you must choose an app that will help you track leaves of absence in your company. As mentioned previously, you can use specialized HR management software for this purpose.
However, these apps can be pretty costly—especially for smaller companies.
Another great option for leave of absence tracking software is a time tracker. Feature-rich time tracking apps like WebWork can help you with their dedicated
Leave Management functionality.
However, besides just managing days off, you can manage lots of other aspects of your business with them.
You can use time trackers to boost your team’s productivity, manage workflows with Task Management, and do much more.
As a result, such apps will be a worthwhile investment for your firm—especially in the long term.
Create leave of absence policies
Once you’ve selected your leave of absence tracker, you should set up your company’s policies in the software.
In WebWork, this involves creating a new leave policy and setting key details, like the leave balance and whether it’s paid or not.
Train your staff on how to track leave of absence
After choosing and setting up a leave of absence tracker, you must train your team to use it. With an app like WebWork, this process will be simple.
Your employees will need to know how to request days off correctly. Your management team, meanwhile, will need to approve or reject requests following company policies.
Manage employee absences in your dashboard
Following the previous steps, you can start managing employee absences with your leave of absence tracker.
You’ll be able to reap the benefits of automated leave of absence tracking with little effort.
