As the old saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a wish. And as the much more recent saying goes, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
As a People Ops leader, you play a pivotal role in your org’s ability to effectively workforce plan and achieve the goals you set to accomplish as a company. When a leave of absence is requested, however, it can be a punch in the mouth that sends your plans of organizational success to the canvas if you don’t have the proper tools in place.
Fortunately, you don’t need to wish for a simpler way to manage the intricate, delicate, and complex leave process. A simpler way already exists that provides the empathetic support your employees need, and the transparency required to effectively and efficiently workforce plan accordingly.
How Workforce Planning is Impacted by Leaves of Absence
The most obvious impact a leave of absence has on workforce planning is perhaps the most significant one. You had a human contributing meaningful work to their team, and now (or “soon” if it’s a leave with some lead time) you don’t. Your first thought will likely be how to replicate that gap in production.
But the truth is, the impact of a leave of absence extends beyond the employee needing the leave.
“So many people are involved with a single leave beyond the employee themselves,” says Tilt COO Kait Feeney. “The employee’s manager wants to support their employee because they’re a good human and knows that giving a damn also has a real business case like recruitment and retention. HR wants to support the employee, but also has to deal with upper management’s concerns about the impact on the business and the employee’s closest teammates.”
The leave of absence journey your employee is embarking on is complex in its own right, but if you’re managing your leaves manually, or in siloed systems that don’t provide total transparency and data accuracy for all concerned parties (or some piecemealed combo of both), you’re trying to duck a surprise uppercut to your workforce blindfolded.
When another leave request comes in…then another…and another…your efforts to keep your organization in contention for greatness will be up against the ropes without a modern approach.
How Modern Leave Software Leads To Better Workforce Planning
Tilt’s leave management software solution simplifies the otherwise complex process of taking leave for employees, but it also provides a single source of truth for accurate insights into all leaves across the organization.
On one view, HR is given visibility into every leave occurring within the organization, with important workforce planning details like if the leave is continuous or intermittent, which state the leave is occurring in, as well as start and return dates for a leave.
Details of a leave of absence are often fluid with dates changing, employees moving and sometimes the actual reason for leave changing (like from a parental leave to a bereavement leave).
Tilt leverages data directly from your HRIS so demographic data is always accurate and your organization’s ability to workforce plan simplified. Manually tracking all of this information with any form of accuracy is an administrative nightmare, but with Tilt it can be a waking dream.
Comprehensive leave insights for HR is a beautiful thing, but for true workforce planning effectiveness managers need some love too.
Explore the manager dashboard below to see how the power and simplicity of Tilt gives managers the insights they need to support their employee on live while accommodating gaps in their workforce effectively:
By simply logging into Tilt, managers can see (almost) everything People Ops can see (employee privacy is crucial to proper leave management, after all). Managers are given holistic visibility into every employee on their team who is on a leave at any given time, they can click into an employee’s specific leave plan to learn more about that particular leave, and get the latest information on when that employee is returning.
Boost Your Employee Experience With Tilt’s 1-2 Punch
You know what else negatively impacts workforce planning? Burnout and turnover.
Tilt’s transparency and simplicity allows you to reduce the administrative burden on People Ops while seamlessly delivering valuable and accurate leave information to the leaders who need to keep their workforce optimized and their objectives on target.
All that is well and good, but if the employee experience isn’t exemplary, you could face another challenge in the form of employee dissatisfaction. Poor leave visibility hinders workforce planning which increases the likelihood you may deal with employee burnout for those teammates left frantically picking up the slack, and employees not returning after a poor leave experience.
As one People Ops leader Tilt recently spoke with put it,
“A lot of people don’t return (from leave). When somebody goes on a leave I don’t know if we’re ever going to see them again.”
Tilt’s 1-2 combination of process automation and human support (that’s right, every employee taking a leave gets a dedicated Leave Success Manager to handle any questions or quell any concerns about an upcoming leave) ensures that your organization has what it needs to keep burnout at bay, and employees returning engaged and productive after their empathetically supported leave.
Compare the quote above to what an employee experiencing leave through Tilt has to say:
“The Tilt software is intuitive and easy to use. The progress bar and outlined steps are fantastic features! Each step included clear instructions, need-to-know information, and actions required by me. Paired with (my Leave Success Manager) Alexandra’s thoughtful communication and responsiveness, I felt well supported and impressed with my Tilt experience.” – Adriana Aea, Learning & Development Specalist @ TrueBlue
Tilt’s makes leave easy so that employees get the best support possible during their leave and organizations have the information needed to workforce plan in their absence.
About Tilt
Tilt is leading the charge in all things leave of absence management through easy-to-use tech and human touch. Since 2017, our proprietary platform and Empathy Warriors have been helping customers make leave not suck by eliminating administrative burdens, keeping companies compliant, and providing a truly positive and supportive leave of absence experience for their people.
