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Originally Posted On: https://www.e-days.com/news/why-you-need-an-absence-management-system
5 reasons you need an absence management system
In this blog, we outline five reasons why you need an absence management system to centralise all of your employee absence and holiday information.
If you’re tracking absences and leave with paper and spreadsheets, or your current HR platform is lacking an innovative absence function, then a detailed view of how absence is impacting your organisation may be lacking. With a smart attendance system in place, you can integrate with other HR and payroll systems, become compliant with working time regulations in different regions, and slash the admin burden associated with handling holiday requests and sickness absences.
Human error & incorrect data
The problem: A common problem that many absence management systems are often exposed to is human error. We are all human and make mistakes from time to time, we can be so busy that we forget to approve a holiday or make a simple typo when making entitlement calculations.
The solution: Although these may seem like minor issues they can have larger implications in the long term. Employee satisfaction can drop as a result of the forgotten approval and payroll may encounter issues when entitlement calculations are inaccurate. This can all be avoided by implementing an automated absence management system that can provide immediate and accurate calculations along with reminders and alerts to minimise the risk of any mistakes.
Lack of visibility
The problem: Another problem that many people encounter with manual absence management processes is the lack of visibility they provide. Unless you have an all-encompassing view of when your team is in and out of the office, planning resources can be difficult. Team members can quite often book holidays around the same time, especially in the summer, meaning you may find your organisation struggles to remain as productive as usual when more employees are on leave that you had taken into account.
The solution: To get better visibility of absence within your organisation, you need a solution that has tailored group calendar views that can be integrated with your email provider. This will provide you with increased operational awareness to ensure the organisation runs smoothly.
Visibility is particularly important for global organisations, especially for multi-regional teams that span across several locations. If you are a global business, you should aim to get an absence management system that can address global compliance and the needs of all your employees worldwide.
Poor reporting
The problem: Many organisations cite poor absence reporting in their previous methods as a major factor in looking to upgrade to absence management software. A lack of reporting functionality can leave organisations blind to the reasons that their employees are absent, which can then lead to missing out on vital opportunities to step in and address absence issues before they become a bigger problem.
The solution: edays has an in-built reporting function, graphical dashboards, and allows data to be exported to excel, enabling you to enhance your absence reporting processes. Automated reports can be set up to save time, and data can be split by individual, team, location or site to give you the clearest picture of how absence is impacting different areas of your organisation.
Limited Functionality
The problem: Most systems out there are very one dimensional and provide HR with the bare minimum. In-depth functionality may be lacking, the user experience may be poor, and the overall visibility an organisation gets from such a system may not be up to scratch.
The solution: A system like edays provides information on much more than simply sickness absence and holiday booking. It also includes return to work processes, bradford factor calculations, absence figures and trends, and lots more. All helping to advance your absence management processes, providing you with vital information about why your employees are absent and if there is a need to step in.
Why not check out our bradford factor calculator that allows you to score an employee by applying the weighting of their unplanned absence.
Time and Admin
The problem: Manual methods of recording absence and leave, such as using paper and spreadsheets, often require much more time and admin to keep up to date, cross-check. and review.
The solution: You can get some of your much needed time back by implementing a cloud-based absence solution like edays and automating your absence management. We can integrate with your current HR stack, automatically feeding data into them and removing the need for manual data input.
One centralised, configurable absence management system can help to take away the admin burden, and reveal actionable absence data that enables people managers and HR to better support their employees.
