Time offs are essential in preventing employee burnout, keeping them engaged and ultimately enhancing their productivity. Truth be told however, employee time-offs can also result in chaos, time delays and lost productivity for organizations. This is especially so when employee time-off requests are not well managed.
While managing time-off requests can sometimes be difficult and overwhelming, you can make it easier on yourself by following the following tips;
Establish an Attendance Tracking System for Key Employees
Things can get thick when multiple employees go on time-offs at the same time; especially when the said employees are key figures in the organization. For example, a department heads meeting may not effectively achieve its agenda if only 10 out of 20 department heads can attend. To avoid such a scenario, it is important to develop a system to track the time-off requests of employees; especially those who make things tick in the workplace. Monitoring and tracking time-off requests ensure that you can plan for staff absences in advance.
Develop Limits for Time-Off Requests
Sometimes, employees may try to trick the system into giving them extra time off. For example, some employees may request for time-off or sick time on the first work-day after the end of a vacation or employee leave of absence. Similarly, some employees may submit a time-off request on the last workday before the start of their vacation period or even on the last work-day before a 3-day weekend. Such requests result in lost productivity and it would be important to make a stand on such practices before they slowly become part of company culture.
Offer Incentives for Employee Time-Off
Believe it or not, if employees are not taking enough time off work, their productivity will also be affected detrimentally. In this respect, it is vital for companies to actively encourage employees to take their vacations and time-offs.
They are numerous ways of doing this. For example, the company should come up with a vacation policy that includes a minimum number of vacation days an employee can take every year. Another strategy would be to offer employees monetary incentives to take their vacations. For example, this could include paying them annual vacation stipends. Even something as simple as developing a culture of real vacations where employees are completely disconnected from the workplace would help in encouraging employees to take time-offs.
Give Time-Offs as a Reward
Another way to increase employee productivity using time-offs is to use them as a reward for good employee performance or the successful accomplishment of milestones. This could be in the form of bonus days-off or surprise day-offs.
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