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Who’s off? Philip Cross, co-founder of WhosOff.com, an application that allows companies to manage staff leave, talks about managing holiday in a business ou’re at home, in the evening and your partner is asking about your summer holiday. They’ve found a deal and want to know if you can take time off. What do you do? Easy, you go online to the office leave planner, see who’s off and put in a request. The holiday organiser gets notified straight away, and, if they’re connected, they can authorise your holiday online or via a mobile app in minutes. But this may not be your experience, and if not, then I guess the person managing the staff holidays is likely in spreadsheet hell or wall planner pain! Who’s off today? Who’s off tomorrow? Next week? Next year? Has your staff annual leave become a form filling, time
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Has your staff annual leave become a form filling, time consuming hassle fest, causing stress and upset all round?
consuming hassle fest, causing stress and upset all round? Fortunately, these days, it is possible to run a sophisticated holiday system that actually provides a cost benefit and will not break the bank. Many online services are offering staff leave planners that allow your staff to access a holiday system to manage not just holidays, but also other out-of-office times, meetings, medical appointments, sickness and so on. The benefits are not limited to the time saved in the administration. Yes, this is an important consideration when implementing any leave system, and perhaps the easiest comparison to “value” the benefit. For example it has been estimated that the average time spent (by all parties involved) in dealing with a
holiday request, checking and approving and so on, can be 1.5 hours! Especially when you consider the administrator needs to check if there are enough days available, if the holiday clashes with anybody else, if there are enough people in the department, contacting managers, and notifying HR. But there are some other real tangible benefits beyond the administration side. Getting your leave and absence into a more transparent system can help your staff to make better informed and more timely judgements when seeking leave, avoiding the end of year rush, or at least making it easier for you to see that people need to get their holidays in so you can respond accordingly. You can see trends, of sickness for example, and not only you
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