Let’s face it: managing leave and accommodations is not getting any easier for HR. New states are coming out with complicated leave laws every year, more companies are offering their own types of leave benefits, and accommodations and leave requests are on the rise. One great way to take the pressure off – and reduce the chance of a costly lawsuit – is by finding and implementing the right technology. Here’s three reasons why your hardworking, multi-tasking HR team deserves an easy-to-use, purpose-built leave and accommodations management system.
#1. Email and Spreadsheet Hell Shouldn’t Be Status Quo Anymore
In our 2023 Leave of Absence Forecast, we found that 28% of leave managers handle their leave program with just spreadsheets and emails. Given how much email just one leave request would generate – let alone the eight step ADA interactive process – the inboxes of HR are often nightmarish. Free your leave and accommodations team from the tyranny of their inbox by giving them the tools to centralize and automate their case management. Even better, HR teams can customize and send every email from the platform itself.
Platforms like AbsenceSoft allow employees to submit requests directly through an online portal, so that inboxes are avoided completely.
Give your HR team the tools to climb out of the depths of email hell forever.
#2. Staying Compliant is Getting Harder – and Google Isn’t the Answer
Every day, more states are passing, enacting, and amending their own paid family leave laws. The recently-passed Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is unprecedented in its protections and complexity – adding to the already-daunting task of staying compliant with the ADA. Staying compliant with the ADA, FMLA, PWFA, and other laws should never be the sole burden of an overworked HR team – especially if their only tools are their favorite search engine and an overflowing Documents folder. All it takes is one unintentional delay or a case that slips through the cracks for a lawsuit to happen. With FMLA and ADA lawsuits abound, your team deserves a tool that makes compliance a breeze. Providers like AbsenceSoft combine their technology with legal partnerships to make sure eligibility calculations, updated forms, and automated reminders are ready to go on day one. When HR has access to a centralized, updated, automated system, and it is much easier to know exactly what to do, everyone can have a lot more peace of mind.
#3. Taking Time Off Shouldn’t Involve Weeks of Advance Planning
Even at very large companies, leave and accommodations teams can be just a few people. For smaller companies, these people often have duties that extend beyond just managing leaves of absence and workplace accommodations. If one of these employees wants to take time off, or is unexpectedly sick, their absence can easily have a negative impact on the business and their fellow employees.
In many organizations, leave and accommodations cases are documented in spreadsheets and email accounts accessible only by one or two people.
If that employee is out for any reason, the answer to many incoming requests is to simply wait until they return to work. Your team deserves more than coming back to a mountain of unanswered emails and frustrated co-workers – or worse, spending PTO “just catching up” while they are sick or on vacation. With a centralized system like AbsenceSoft, covering for a co-worker that’s OOO becomes much simpler. Every case gets fully documented and tracked in a system accessible to an entire team. Cases can be easily reassigned and moved forward so that those responsible for leave and accommodations can take time away from work without guilt. Once a system is in place, life can get even better for HR. By leveraging system data and insights, HR can easily see and predict employee leave patterns and plan in advance for peak leave periods.
Data can be used in numerous ways to improve your leave team’s overall experience. Scheduling conflicts, burnout, and understaffing can all become a thing of the past.
Conclusion
HR teams are unsung heroes of any great organization – especially when it comes to managing leave and accommodations. However, a swath of new laws and policies has made their jobs much harder in recent years. Give your team a much-needed lifeline with the right leave and accommodation management system. They can offload and automate repetitive, administrative work and spend more time putting the “human” back in human resources. To see all the ways AbsenceSoft can make the lives of your HR team (and employee experience across your organization) better, schedule a demo today.