Leave management, it can feel…complicated! Here are the top 3 challenges facing businesses today and how to get out in front of them.

Challenge 1: Effectively Tracking Employee Leave

The first challenge in leave management is effectively tracking leave requests.

The Solution: Businesses must know and understand the rules around leave, including:

• Being aware that employee vacations accrue differently in different companies and vary across provinces.

• Many companies have different policies about sick days, short-term disability leave, and long-term disability leave.

• Have a plan to manage internal policies and external law set by the government.

Challenge 2: Effectively Tracking Employee Leave While Avoiding Payroll Errors

Leave management requires effective tracking and a dynamic payroll system. Some leaves are paid; some aren’t. Depending on your policies, you may even offer your employees both paid and unpaid leave within the same category.

For example, you may offer two weeks of paid vacation and an additional week of unpaid vacation. There’s definite potential for error in this situation. How do you know when someone’s used up all their paid vacation days and has started using their unpaid time? Your payroll software may not be able to discriminate. If no one tells the person responsible for managing payroll, they may not adequately compensate the individual.

The Solution: Automation and connectivity within an HRIS. This integrated system ensures accurate leave information is communicated to payroll. Since payroll clerks can quickly and easily pull information from the system, it makes it easier to know when someone should be paid for leave.

Challenge 3: Efficient Leave Policy

Your policies are important when it comes to managing leave effectively. Do you make allowances for employees to take religious holidays? If you make them take non- Christian observances as unpaid holidays, you could be working with a discriminatory policy.

The Solution: Make sure your leave policy adheres to the law. Be sure to revisit your policies to make sure you’re treating everyone equitably.

To do this, work with a legal team that specializes in HR related law that can help manage policies, answer questions and provide the best guidance. An HRIS can help you here too. The system can help you stay on top of your compliance. A cloud-based solution is updated regularly and will incorporate changes in legislation to ensure you stay on top of compliance.

Tackle Leave Challenges Head-On!

While the three challenges listed above are not the only challenges your business may face when dealing with leave management, they are the four you’re most likely to encounter.

Despite the challenges that can arise in leave management, some solutions exist, and they can improve not just your leave management, but your all your HR activities.

A Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is designed to simplify and streamline ongoing HR processes. By enabling the automation of continuous tasks, an HRIS helps prevent human error. Using an HRIS can help you standardize your leave management process, ensuring it adheres to clearly defined rules.

If you don’t already have a human resource information system in place, you may want to consider adopting one. For those of you already using one, you can strengthen your current leave management strategy using the various modules an HRIS can offer.

Test drive Canada's leading HRIS platform: Collage.