The best part of the holiday season is taking that much-needed break from a stressful work environment. However, the process of approving leave in an organization, also known as time off, is not as easy as it sounds.  This process is highly prone to delays due to chaotic paperwork or complex approval chains. At the same time, when the process is not handled properly, your employees are easily disappointed.   

If you are a Human Resources team, this article will show you how processing leave requests can be much easier!

So what's the solution?

Zoho Forms allows you to handle your leave requests entirely online. We make this possible by letting you keep key people in the loop. Send emails automatically and receive approval for leave from the appropriate managers. This doesn't only streamline the process, but it allows you to schedule employees with the fear of becoming short-staffed. The added bonus is that your employees are automatically informed on final decisions, preventing shock or disappointment. But enough with the explanation. Let's see how this can work for your team!  

Encourage employees to plan their leave in advance 

Planning for vacation earlier can be a great way for the administration to keep track of the number of employees available at work during specific times of the year. Remind your employees about this by posting on organization forums and chat channels or by sending a mass email.  You can also keep your leave request forms open for the months prior to the holiday season. Making them available for a while will help to avoid last-minute requests. Learn here on how to restrict the availability of your form.

Get timely employee information

Provide a form that allows employees to state their organization details and elaborate on their vacation plans. In the form I've shown below, I've added fields to allow employees to put down their contact details, their department, and the leave dates. This can expedite the approval process when administration considers the request.  

In order to involve and notify the managers whose approval is needed, create individualized hierarchies for leave requests. For example, set a hierarchy chain from levels 1 to 3, where level 3 members hold the highest position. You can see below that the level 1 "Manager" is created involving 2 line managers decision, and the next level (level 2) involves the "HR".

Automatically notify employees on final decisions

You can notify the employees, team, or manager automatically about the final approval decision. In both the case of an approval or denial of the request, you can choose to send personalized emails to acknowledge the decision. This greatly helps in keeping the team notified on when specific employees will be absent. 

Similarly, the HR Manager or the manager of a specific department can see which of their employees' leave requests have been approved by visiting the report for that form. 

Sounds easy? Getting set up with this process is also a breeze!  This approach not only promotes a paperless workflow, but also encourages faster decisions and keeps the entire process transparent between HR and managers. It's not only organization members that can be involved in the process. If your approvers are Office 365 users, you can directly add them, too. Learn more about this here.

Over to you!  

Happy employees are as important as happy customers for your business growth. This holiday season, run your office smoothly, create less commotion, and bring forth better human interaction. So, are you ready to create your approval workflow? 

Until next time, 

Prasana