IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING LEAVES IN ADVANCE

Employees taking unscheduled or excessive leaves may cause organizations to lose productivity. Planning absences and long vacations enable employers to adjust work situations in advance. This not only ensures smooth functioning, adequate cover but also reduces the risk of scrambling and being caught short. Such planning in an organization exudes strong morale and work ethic.

However, some difficult circumstances and obstacles may emerge anytime despite proper planning and precaution. There is very little that one can do when numerous employees are found ailing at the same time. In such cases, preparing and managing annual leave and vacation coverage will act as an aid to minimize work disruptions, ensuring quality work and productivity so that the company can meet the goals and deadlines.

If the leaves are managed in a proper and organized fashion then the morale of the team also remains unaffected. It is understood that no one likes to be forced to do extra work regularly just because the company faltered at adequately preparing holiday coverage.

An organization must have a proper leave management policy along with a leave management system. If both these are in place in a company then carrying out tasks such as applying for leaves among others, according to the company policy becomes uncomplicated, effortless, and hassle-free.

A leave policy helps the employer to determine the number of breaks each staff member is entitled to. Also, it brings to light what types of leaves one is eligible for and the method to apply for those absences as and when needed. This is a way to provide the company employees with some kind of certainty that the company will allow them to take the necessary time off to deal with issues of emergency, recuperate from an illness, celebrate their festivals, deal with life events, or simply rest if they have a leave policy in place.

If leaves are not managed properly in an organization then they might become a reason for losses in a business. Leaves are a benefit for any worker but it is the responsibility of the approver to keep in mind the consequences if too many employees have been granted leave at once. More often than not, a manager is the approver of such leaves. A good way to avoid such a situation is to analyze the roster and approve and reject leaves based on that.

Investing in good software that ensures leave management is also a solution to counter such issues. ProdigiousERP is one such tool that offers an organization to efficiently manage its employees and their leaves. It offers the following features:

1.      Unlimited leave types

It allows a user to configure any number of leaves with different rules that align with the leave policy of the company.

2.      Customize leave policies

The system can be configured to manage any leave policy that the organization follows. It allows you to enter and edit the leave policy and make the system and software work as desired by the organization.

3.      Auto Credit Leave Balance as per Policy

The Leave Management system can define the cycles and periodicity of leaves. Leave balance can also be credited to employees' accounts for them to view and plan their leaves accordingly.

4.      Compensatory-off Management

It would be brutish if the company keeps making the employees work without them having to compensate for their hard work even on days when they were to take an off. In such cases, Prodigious allows and manages to keep track of every comp-off along with their expiry days so that the morale of an employee is boosted and the quality of their work is not compromised.

5.      Short Leave Management

Prodigious supports short leaves and its frequency.

6.      Leave Encashment

Often, when there are leaves left in the account of an employee if not availed then he may want to encash it if allowed in the leave policy of a company. Prodigious is enabled to manage this situation as it allows leave encashment.

7.      Bonus Leave Management

It offers the organization automatic forwarding of leaves for employees if there are unavailed leaves as bonus leaves as per the company policy.

8.      Advance Leave Management

Applying leaves in advance is good practice as it gives time to the manager to plan the tasks and align the leaves of other employees in such a way that they do not have a lack of strength or staff to share the workload. Therefore, the application of leaves in advance is supported by the software.

9.      Online Leave Application

Leaves can be applied by employees online through the Employee Self Service (ESS) Portal after analyzing the leave balance of their leaves.

10. Leave Calendar for Managers

It is on the shoulders of a manager if there is an impact on the overall productivity of any department in an organization or the entire organization due to a lack of strength. The manager is often the approver of leaves. Hence, Prodigious offers the manager to view the leave calendar in advance before approving leaves and planning their resources.

11. Multi-Role Online Approval

Multi-role online approval is supported. An organization may have any number of managers at different levels for a group of employees or a department. Having leaves approved by one or all of these managers can be managed by Prodigious.

It is a given that absenteeism is decreased and transparency is increased when there is an appropriate channel via which staff of an organization can apply for leaves and access their information. Productivity and employee self-awareness are also important. Also, the workforce may get a boost and, in some cases, reality checks on their attendance and performance in relation to their leave account.