In the UK, employees take an average of 5.8 days sick a year?

In Germany, this number is almost twice as high at 10.6 days a year?

The most common day for employee absence is Monday and the least common is Friday?

If you keep these figures in mind, managing and tracking employee vacation requests and absences is a crucial part of running a business successfully. Time is precious and valuable. If it is not managed correctly, companies not only face confusion and frustration among employees but will also lose money. It is therefore important to implement accurate processes. This will keep employees happy and the business running smoothly.

Find out about 5 problems that effective absence management can solve – not only saving you money but improving the efficiency of your business.

• Depreciation of Good Employees

No recorded reasons for an employee’s absence can easily lead to false impressions caused by a lack of communication: Is a child sick and the parent has to stay home? Has a tragedy occurred? Has the employee taken their well-deserved vacation or is the employee sick?

This differentiation of the reasons can help to analyze the collected data and not write off an excellent employee for an unavoidable and unspecified tragedy. Also, the options for reasons of absence provide an excellent basis for follow-up meetings, appraisals or personnel planning forecasts in case of noticeable absence patterns.

• No Overview of Personnel Capacity

If no absence management software is available and all absences due to illness, leave requests and other absences are stored in a table, this can cause delays in the communication chain from the employee to the HR department and the responsible manager.

This delay can mean that management is unable to respond to productivity problems or stress within departments because they cannot track immediate staff levels. Therefore, absence management software can improve communication and transparency within the company and thus prevent these bottlenecks.

• Employees are Unsure about Absence Arrangements and their Absence Status

Have you ever asked your employees to tell you the absence regulations of your company? Or the extent of the vacation already taken? If you find that employees cannot find this information, it is time to change the process. Empower your employees to manage and track their absences.

By giving them access, they easily can manage their absences, submit absence requests, see how many days of leave they have taken, requested and planned. Managers on the other side can easily track their team members’ absences and allocate resources accordingly – not to mention freeing up your HR department!

• Unclear Communication of Company Rules and Regulations

Can I take Christmas off? Is Monday a holiday? These questions are perhaps just a few of the many that your HR department is regularly asked. Absence management can solve this problem: a simple implementation of company rules that are displayed in the calendar function. If the employee wants to take a holiday on one of these days, they will receive a notification.

• Overflow of the HR department’s E-mail Account with Absence Notifications and Leave Requests

Keeping track of all absence requests and notifications can be a resource-intensive task and challenge – not to mention updating spreadsheets and monitoring absence allowances!

Absence management increases productivity, efficiency and workflow by replacing these e-mails with easy-to-use, automated, accurate and fast software. This allows your company to relocate newly gained resources.

Do you see any of these problems happening in your company? Then we invite you to learn more about our NOVATIVE Absence Management module or request a demo.

We are happy to support you with the success of your business!

The post 5 Problems You Can Avoid With Absence Management appeared first on Novative.

Manually creating staff schedules can be time-consuming. Keeping up with requests such as staff absences, holidays, and training can be hectic if a proper system is not in place. These edits will not be in real-time, so it is tough to keep everybody updated efficiently. Things can be even more complicated when shift patterns are irregular for example in the hospitality industry. Leaving the person scheduling the rotas a considerable responsibility. They need to ensure all shifts are covered, and there are no double entries of staff. Processes on Excel spreadsheets are not equipped to function efficiently with all these needs, leaving staff scheduling to be a nightmare.

However, scheduling software could solve all these problems and more. Here are five benefits of NOVA Smart staff scheduling software

1. Cost effective

   Time is money, and by freeing up the managers with automated processes leaves them to concentrate on more productive ventures.

2. Increase efficiency and productivity

   NOVA Smart is designed to reduce the time it takes to coordinate employee’s rotas. Scheduling can be a tedious process that recurs about every few weeks and requires a significant investment of time for managers. NOVA Smart allows managers to automate scheduling, and this enables them to focus their time and energy elsewhere.

3. Forecast workload and staff

   When planning, it’s important to schedule enough people power for specific times. Consider the retail industry during Christmas. This busy time of the year often requires more labour. Employee scheduling software allows you to plan for those seasonal fluctuations. Likewise, these capabilities can minimise an unproductive workplace caused by overscheduling.

4. Simplify HR processes

   Scheduling is a repetitive task that occurs frequently. Automating this task will simplify the process, and amendments can be made in real-time keeping everyone up-to-date efficiently.

5. Maintain employees needs

   Employees may have different needs with rotas, employee A might not be able to work after 2.30pm, and employee B can only work every other Saturday. These needs can get lost if not appropriately recorded inflicting on both the employee and business. NOVA Smart will eliminate the confusion, managers can input recurring employee needs and irregular events, such as holiday, so these scheduling considerations are never overlooked and always factored in.

These are just five of the benefits the NOVA Smart scheduling software offer, and there are many more including reporting, staff replacement, employees can access their schedules anytime, anywhere.

If you would like to find out more, please contact one of our expert team members today. Start the new year off efficiently and benefit from more time.

The post Advent Calendar Window 8: 5 Benefits of Using Scheduling Software appeared first on Novative.