How to Build a Business Case for Leave Management Technology
Note: This blog is an excerpt from our Leave Management Software Buying Guide. Our in-depth guide includes everything HR should know about managing leaves of absence with technology. Download the guide today.
Leave management technology can bring big benefits to HR teams that have aligned their people and processes. Solutions like AbsenceSoft provide a robust toolkit for automating, centralizing, and streamlining all the administrative tasks associated with leave management. The right software can help your team save time, implement best practices, reduce the risks of lawsuits, and improve the experience for both HR and the employees requesting leave.
Unfortunately, HR teams are not often the ones in the driver’s seat when software purchasing decisions are made. It’s not uncommon for HR to be notified only after a technology decision has been made, such as changing to a new benefits platform or payroll software.
For a solution like leave management software that can save so much on cost and reduce legal risks, getting buy-in from decision-makers should not be a challenge.
To successfully promote the need for a solution from within, it just takes a little time to understand each stakeholder’s priorities, as well as what challenges stand in their way. Then, you simply share how leave management software will alleviate their concerns.
Below, we’ll take a look at the various stakeholders usually involved with the purchase and implementation of software like AbsenceSoft. You can use our lists below to address their biggest concerns, and help them understand the benefits they will get. You may also want to consider making some of these stakeholders part of your implementation team once you have purchase approval.
CHROs and HR Executive Leadership
This should be the most straightforward group to get buy-in from, as it will have the most direct, positive impact on their department. When asking HR leadership to support purchasing leave management software, be sure to let them know how a solution like AbsenceSoft will:
- Save 66% or more time per case, giving teams more time to spend with employees
- Reduce the complexity of leave management tasks
- Provide automatic and instant leave eligibility calculations
- Enable easier leave tracking, especially for intermittent leave
- Ensure timely communications with managers and employees with automated reminders
- Provide employees visibility into their cases with the Employee Self Service portal so they are continuously updated without having to inquire directly
- Save on recruitment and turnover costs as employee experience and satisfaction improves
- Improve return-to-work times, and provide a better return-to-work experience
- Keep your team compliant with continuously changing federal and state leave laws, without them having to Google or search or updates
- Offer a robust, post-go live program to support HR’s early use of the system
- Manage workplace accommodations in the same system, with a preconfigured ADA interactive checklist
- Gain critical real-time insights into leave and accommodations across the organization
- Easily run standard, pre-built reports and customize new ones for specific needs
- Keep communications consistent with preconfigured packets, letters, and notifications that can be quickly customized and shared
CIOs and IT Leadership
When championing software, it is best not to wait until the last minute to get IT involved. They are primarily concerned with how secure it is, how well it integrates, and how much time their team will have to dedicate to supporting the system. Get IT involved early in the process, and share that AbsenceSoft is:
- Purpose-built by HR tech experts to provide leave managers a way to increase efficiency and ensure compliance when processing and administering leave, accommodations and disability.
- Securely hosted, scalable SaaS (cloud-based) with both desktop and mobile applications
- Fully SOC2 Type 2 compliant, with 70+ security and compliance controls implemented, including fully customizable admin controls and end-to-end document encryption in transit and at rest
- Automatically updated with federal and state leave law changes, with no action needed by IT
- Highly configurable, with multiple options for implementation and integrations
- Ready to integrate with all major HRIS and ERP systems for minimal IT involvement
- Automatically updated with new software releases
Compliance Leaders
For organizations with compliance leaders, a very quick conversation should be all that is needed to get approval. Be sure to tell them that leave management software like AbsenceSoft:
- Has an internal compliance team that partners with a nationally-recognized law firm with attorneys in all 50 states
- Updates the system as soon as leave laws change
- Provides a single source of truth for all leave and accommodations compliance activities
- Offers 24×7, on-demand access to real-time customizable reports
Depending on the size of the organization, other stakeholders might need to be involved in the purchase and implementation as well. Companies with CFOs and procurement teams often just want to be sure about the return on their investment (ROI).
Let your financial team know that by insourcing FMLA administration and using a purpose-built leave management software to manage requests and claims, an organization with 5,000 employees can expect to save 5-7x times their expenditure. Even better, that isn’t even inclusive of the potential cost savings of lawsuit prevention, which can be more than $400,000 per case.
Our team of experts at AbsenceSoft is here to help you at every step of the purchase process, including helping you make the case to other stakeholders in the purchase process. To see AbsenceSoft in action, schedule a demo today.
To check out the rest of the Leave Management Software Buying Guide, download your copy today.
