In today’s world, there are some key principles esp. mid-size and big companies need to establish for attracting and retaining key talents of all business areas.
This blog post will start a new series of HR Digital Now called >HR Key Principles & Commitments< focussing on soft factors the HR department of tomorrow might need to tackle to guarantee companies success. This blog entry will cover leave & absence types, their influence on work-life balance and what HR should do to create, protect and utilize with less effort an efficient approach.
Leave & Absences types and potential of digitalization
There are plenty of leave types in the range of short-term and long-term scenarios. Commonly used is the flexible working time to cover critical and prompt leave needs. If an ad-hoc leave is needed, it also should be granted ad-hoc. Grant this leave without any complicated requesting and no approval workflow. Ideally, the employee has on-demand access to time management data using a company app on a private mobile phone.
Marriage, relocation or the care of a sick child are employee life cycle events which need employees fullest attention. There might be laws or collective agreements available covering such events from a legal perspective. If not, establish simple guidelines and an easy opportunity for the employee requesting special leave. Ideally, the line manager is informed through the system and can decline this request with an explanation in case of ongoing business criticality. While thinking about the ideal approval process: Don’t involve anybody from HR! In case of any regulation check would need to be done: Start an automation and let this be done via robotics! Please check my previous blog post regarding RPA in case of interest.
Keep in Touch – Plan your workforce more effectively
A leave due to more time-intensive intentions such as sabbatical or parental leave will cover the long-term end of leave types. Dependent on the duration of leave, benefits programme should be supplemented with a working lifetime account module. This allows the employees to save their extra working time such as over hours or special payment in a time account which can be activated in case of employee needs. The marriage preparation is taking longer than expected? The granted sabbatical must be extended? The employee could get paid leave using this saved time.
„Keep in Touch“ modules would be beneficial for both sides during employees absence. On the one hand, the employer is somehow pre-warned in case that the employee would need to prolong the absence. On the other hand, the employee would return packed with ongoing corporate information which will guarantee a smooth onboarding experience. Through the revolution of digitalization, most office jobs can be done remotely and be combined with home office days. All line managers should keep such flexible possibilities into consideration preparing the return of the employee.
Reconceptualize Leaves & Absences programmes
Every talent and high-performer in your organization must rest to reload their batteries to fulfill company performance purposes. Having more and more flexibilities when it comes to leaves, the company should establish the following three things:
- Drive digital mindset change within HR and the whole organization
- Commit a trustful relationship towards your employees on all levels
- Conceptualize a „Keep in Touch“ model in case of long-term leaves
As mentioned, a dramatical mindset shift within the old-fashioned HR departments is absolutely crucial. Tracking and controlling of employees working time is no HR job. Not even of the line manager. Only in very limited cases of trust-breaking suspicion, the line manager should be encouraged to have a conversation with the employee. HR should only be involved in case the line management is requesting this.
HR department should encourage their counterparts acting independently using the freedom within a frame methodology. This can be reached through these three simple key commitments:
- Start to increase managers accountability for employee leaver options
- Keep developing simple & easy-to-use (technical) setup offering the different requesting modules
- Stop to interfere as a time-keeper into business workforce management
The requesting process should be easy and on-demand. Offering a digitalized solution having everything visualized at one spot will increase profitability and reduce process turn-over time. In case of any workflow you would need to build, always ask the question of value adding in case of involving HR on a transactional layer for approval. When it comes to system updates this would need to be owned by the related HR Services department. From a process handling perspective, the HR Services agent should simply „re-use“ existing data enriching these data if needed.
What’s next?
Do you want to reconceptualize your leave and absence processes or your benefits portfolio in general? Do you want to implement a „Keep in Touch“ model for your parental leaver community? Don’t hesitate to connect with me. I can support you from a project and experience perspective to reduce turn-over time through gaining process efficiencies.
Please contact me: oliver@hr-digital-now.de
