A salary and basic benefits aren’t enough to keep today’s employees around. The modern workforce expects the workplace to deliver an employee experience that reflects their values and delivers on their needs.
This expectation is particularly strong among younger workers. According to research from Deloitte, 77% of Gen Z employees say it’s important that their employers’ values align with their own.
This trend underscores the importance of personalization in the workplace. A personalized, human-centric workplace is no longer a nice perk. It’s an expectation.
No area of the workplace is left untouched by this desire, including leave and accommodations. When employees need this kind of support, they’re often experiencing a significant life event. They may be adding a new member to their family or recovering from a major illness or injury. Or they could be receiving treatment for a mental health condition.
Whatever the reason, the leave and accommodations process shouldn’t feel impersonal. Slow, unclear, outdated processes can undermine the best workplace culture. But a personalized, modern approach shows employees they are valued amid life’s toughest moments. In fact, recent AbsenceSoft data shows that a supportive, personalized experience improves loyalty, retention, and productivity.
In this blog, we’ll discuss why personalization is crucial to the success of your leave and accommodations program. We’ll also show you key strategies to providing employees an experience that’s tailored and compassionate.
What Does “Personalized” Mean When it Comes to Leave and Accommodations?
The word “personalized” can mean a lot of things. An employee can personalize their workspace by displaying family photos, posters of their favorite bands, and souvenirs from their travels.
When it comes to leave and accommodations, however, personalization plays a different role. The key to providing personalized support is automation. Automation fuels personalized leave by:
- Freeing up HR so it has time to provide support like one-on-one conversations, notes, and small gifts.
- Alleviating managers and giving them bandwidth to respond supportively.
- Creating a convenient, modern experience that allows employees to use self-service and texting so they can complete leave- and accommodation-related tasks with discretion and comfort.
- Infusing brand culture throughout leave and accommodations processes.
The relationship between automation and personalization may seem counterintuitive. Automation performs tasks and processes without human intervention, so how could it create a more human-centered leave and accommodations program?
Automation makes leave and accommodations more efficient, convenient, and personalized because it eases HR’s workload while preserving key human checkpoints. Technology ensures processes that are consistent, transparent, and outfitted with helpful reminders and easy-to-follow instructions. In doing so, HR is able to add personal touches to more cases each day.
Technology also positions employers to make the leave process much more personal by giving employees agency, autonomy, and privacy. A simple self-service portal delivers on all of these fronts. When employees have access to a digital self-service portal, they can privately disclose the situation that’s causing their need for leave or an accommodation.
Texting also boosts the employee experience. Employees benefit when they’re able to receive communications in a way that’s convenient and familiar. It’s especially powerful when employees can follow up on a text prompt on the mobile device where they received it.
Personalization Requires the Right Technology
To build a leave and accommodations program that’s highly personalized, employers need technology that’s built to support and enable these processes in an empathetic, human-centered way.
Without this technology — or with the wrong technology — the employee experience suffers. Manual processes often derail the leave and accommodations process by overwhelming HR, restricting their ability to provide support. And subpar vendors can saddle HR with a surprising amount of work. With employees submitting more requests for support than ever, HR can easily become overwhelmed if it lacks a strong system.
This overwhelm often results in delays, mistakes, and errors. At minimum, these outcomes frustrate employees. But serious errors like wrongfully denied support can generate fines or land employers in legal trouble.
With a purpose-built provider like AbsenceSoft, HR can streamline its workload and optimize the employee experience, all while promoting personalization at scale.
Specifically, employers that use AbsenceSoft can:
- Personalize custom communications and templates to reflect their employer brand or include a supportive note
- Enable employees to use self-service portals to request a leave or accommodation easily, and see the status of their request at any time
- Communicate regularly with employees with their preferred communication method, including text messaging
- Automate administrative tasks to spend more time supporting employees directly
These features allow organizations to build a leave and accommodations program that is both efficient and personalized.
When Washington Federal Bank — one of the largest banking institutions in the United States — partnered with AbsenceSoft, it leveraged our software to customize every employee interaction, including text messages. Employees receive tailored messages on their personal mobile devices that give them important information about their case, or to prompt them to send in information.
With the Right Technology, a Personalized Experience is Possible, In-House or Provided by the Right Vendor
A highly personalized leave and accommodations program doesn’t have to involve intense labor on HR’s part. Whether your organization manages its program in-house or through a third-party administrator (TPA), technology is the key to scaling with efficiency, consistency, and care.
If you’re looking for a TPA, search out a provider that uses AbsenceSoft or a similar tool to deliver a high-quality employee experience. Newfront and BBP Admin are two partners that use AbsenceSoft technology to streamline their clients’ leave and accommodation workloads and optimize personalization.
Employers can also partner with AbsenceSoft directly to refine their approach to leave and accommodations. Purdue University, for example, transformed its manual program into a streamlined, centralized approach that provides customized experiences for 15,000 benefit-eligible employees across three campuses.
The ROI of a Personalized Leave and Accommodations Program
When employers offer a personalized, positive experience in leave and accommodations, they benefit on a business level. AbsenceSoft research shows that these experiences result in increased retention and higher morale among employees.
Hear how positive experiences impacted employees, in survey respondents’ own words:
“During my leave I was able to recuperate and get myself physically ready to go back to work.”
“The process was simple and smooth, which makes it much better and less stressful. It lets you know your boss and your company have your back and best interests in mind.”
It’s no coincidence that the technology that boosts personalization also lowers compliance risk. When employers take advantage of systems that automate their workflows and boost the accuracy of their decisions, they’re able to customize every communication employees encounter.
Technology also gives HR teams more time to focus on employees. By minimizing their workloads, HR can take on more cases while cutting down on administrative labor. One Texas school district, for example, saved 13 work weeks of HR time when it switched to AbsenceSoft.
These efficiency gains enable HR to provide personalized support to employees. This kind of person-to-person attention is critical and highly meaningful as employees seek support during some of life’s most weighty moments.
The Benefits of Getting Personalization Right
The way an employee’s leave or accommodation unfolds can create significant ripple effects for both the worker and the employer. According to AbsenceSoft data, more than a third of employees who had a poor leave or accommodations experience said they felt undervalued — leading them to look for a new job.
A positive experience creates the opposite effect. AbsenceSoft data showed that nearly 70% of employees with a positive experience said they felt more motivated and supported.
Many of the top drivers of a positive experience tie back to personalization:
- Supportive and helpful managers and team members.
- Correct pay and benefits.
- Clear processes with clear instructions.
Respondents to AbsenceSoft’s survey described the impact of streamlined, supportive, personalized processes in their own words:
“The process was very well streamlined. It was easy to fill out a request. My request was received, and I was regularly updated on the process of my application. I got the accommodation that I requested in the end.”
“I think the leave process would be easier if I could apply from anywhere. Then you could get your leave status more easily with mobile notifications.”
Is Your Leave Program Ready to Personalize the Leave Experience at Scale?
With the right partner, your organization can provide personalized leave and accommodation experiences at scale — and reap business rewards as a result. Book a demo with AbsenceSoft to see how our system uniquely positions employers and employees for success.
If you’d like to learn more about the role leave plays in workplace culture, download our 2025 Leave of Absence Employee Experience Report.