These are incredibly challenging times for your business and your people. People are working from home, schedules are virtually non-existent, vacations have been ruined, and everything is in a state of flux. Worst of all, some people are very, very sick.
As an HR leader, maintaining up-to-date time-off information may be at the bottom of your priority list. However, when the world starts returning to normalcy, employees are going to have a lot of questions about PTO. How much time do they have off? What if they had to cancel PTO? In extreme cases, what if an employee tested positive for COVID-19 – does that count against their “regular” sick time? It’s going to be up to you to answer a lot of questions and make sure employee PTO information is accurate.
If you typically rely on your payroll system or a spreadsheet to manage this task, you may find the sheer volume of work difficult, stressful, and time-consuming. And if you had no say in choosing your company’s payroll system, you may find yourself frustrated with its flaws and shortcomings.
If any of the following complaints sound familiar, it may be time to start shopping for a more effective PTO software solution.
Challenges of Using Payroll to Manage PTO
1. PTO approval isn’t easy
Likely, your payroll system tracks accrued paid time off but doesn’t help you figure out if a manager approves a PTO request. How many times have you found yourself hunting down a supervisor asking for time off approval?
Good news: You don’t have to do that! The right PTO software automates the approval process as soon as a request comes through. No more chasing down approvals!
Why you need a better solution:
If you tracked all the time you spend with pending PTO requests, you might find it’s like having a part-time job! Having mechanisms that facilitate getting these approvals faster means you have more time to focus on other aspects of your career.
2. Payroll systems don’t provide visibility into schedule conflicts
Payroll systems are great for keeping your staff paid. However, they give little data or support for PTO and are not the best tracking tool. If you have an analog PTO policy where employees come to your office to request time off, you have to also manually create a calendar to see who else has requested time off in the same period. Because of the inherent clunkiness and opportunity for mistakes in this approach, you might approve someone’s vacation when you already have three other people out of the office. That can mean significant issues when it comes to keeping up with customer service and productivity in your business. Since you were the one to approve these various requests, it’s on you to ensure that the rest of the team picks up the slack while everyone else is out.
Why you need a better solution:
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if employees could see for themselves whether their request conflicts with someone else’s? Instantly being able to spot any potential schedule conflicts will streamline PTO approval and ensure that your business is always staffed for maximum productivity. A quality PTO software solution will provide this.
3. Payroll systems don’t display real-time PTO accrual.
When an employee receives her pay stub, the available time off reflected may be out of date. First, the pay period was a week or longer ago, so she’s accrued more time off since then. And if she has taken time off since that paycheck was processed, she has less PTO available than her pay stub indicates. So having an employee rely on her pay stub for her PTO balance is less than ideal.
Why you need a better solution:
Let’s say an employee thinks she has 16 hours available in PTO because that’s what her recent paycheck indicated. So she asks for two days off next month. You’re about to approve the request, but then you realize she took half a day off last week because she was sick. So you’ve spent time digging through her records to find out what her “real” PTO is. That’s time wasted. A PTO solution should provide both you and your employee real-time PTO data that would ensure she could self-govern her time off and only ask for what’s available.
4. Payroll software can’t forecast future accruals.
In a given year, many employees know when they want to take time off. Maybe her sister Mary is getting married six months from now, so your employee Farrah wants time off for the bachelorette party and ceremony. But because your payroll system is so archaic, Farrah can’t easily calculate how much time she’ll have by the time the wedding rolls around. So she waits until it gets closer. On the flip side, you encourage staff to put in as much notice as possible for vacation requests. But how can they do that if they don’t know how much time they’ll have accrued?
Why you need a better solution:
It’s essential for both you (from an HR perspective) and your employees to be able to forecast paid time off. Payroll systems rarely do that. A comprehensive PTO software can calculate future time off, so when employees request time in advance, the system can verify if they will have enough accrued or not.
BizRun PTO Tracking Software Is Better
BizRun PTO tracking software will help you and your employees streamline time off requests, gain real-time insight into current and future accruals, and avoid schedule conflicts. It will give your people the tools they need to avoid putting in requests they shouldn’t – for time off that exceeds what they’ll earn or that conflicts with other requests.
High-quality PTO tracking software will also help ensure that your employees take the time that they have earned. More than half of employees leave vacation days on the table each year. From a financial standpoint, you may be liable for paying out employees when they leave your company. From a morale standpoint, it’s vital that employees take time off to recharge. Ready access to PTO information means your employees can more easily request and take time off. And you’ll spend less time managing them to do so.
For as low as $4 per user per month, BizRun can simplify time-off management for your whole team. Employees can easily modify their vacation plans remotely and be confident that their accrual balances will be updated accurately. Administrators and managers have visibility to change requests. Approvals can be quickly reassigned to another reviewer if someone is unexpectedly unavailable. Once changes are made, everyone has instant access to updated shared calendars. Managers have real-time insight into who is working and who is out. And, if necessary, an administrator or manager can make changes on behalf of the employee.
Learn more about how BizRun can help you manage your employees’ time, and your own time better. Schedule a free demo or contact us today.
