Is your business required to offer leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act? Do you have a process and form for employees to request leaves of absence? If not, click on the link below to request a template that your employees can use to make leave requests.
Using this document, you can move those requests through the approval process - like making copies of the form and walking them around to the decision makers - and then track the status and manage the resulting leave of absence cases...perhaps on an Excel spreadsheet that captures all the details.
Yeah. That's one way to do it.
An alternative method is using a fully integrated Human Capital Management system that automates the request and routing processes for you, as well as maintains all records electronically. Here's how that more efficient and precise process might work.
Using his/her Employee Self Service access via a web browser, the employee can quickly submit a leave request electronically, including all the the pertinent details that managers and administrators require to make a decision, such as an eligible reason, the expected date range for the leave, and how the time will be taken.
Your organization might even want to pre-qualify requests by having employees complete a questionnaire that filters out ineligible ones before they get to the decision-making level. An item on the questionnaire might look like this:
The results of the questionnaire will let the employee know if s/he qualifies to take a leave of absence before submitting a request.
Once a valid request is submitted, it can be automatically routed to the appropriate manager(s) and/or administrator(s), who can review the details submitted by the employee and make a determination. The request will show up as a to-do item on the decision-maker's secure dashboard, where direct action can be taken. In addition to approving or rejecting the request, the administrator can review and edit the details of the request, as necessary, to bring it into compliance with company policy.
Approved requests are converted into cases that can be dynamically tracked and managed as time passes and the leave of absence is taken.
Because a fully integrated HCM system connects Human Resources and Time and Labor Management (and Payroll, for that matter) all in a single system, the details of the request can be used to quickly and easily populate the employee's time-sheets with the leave of absence entries right from the case, reducing the amount of manual and redundant work that must be completed by managers or payroll administrators. This feature significantly reduces the potential for time tracking and payroll errors.
