The days of tracking leave on spreadsheets are becoming a distant memory. If you’re reading this and currently using spreadsheets to manage leave, however, you are far from alone, and rest assured that a solution to your woes already exists. With a tremendous amount of bias we suggest looking into Tilt to manage your leaves of absence, but let’s move forward with the topic at hand.

Today’s employees have diverse needs and those needs are ever-diversifying. 20 years ago mental health leave would have been the fringiest of fringe concepts, and we suspect policies like miscarriage leave which may seem fringe today will become standard.

Personalized needs have inspired a shift toward more flexible, inclusive leave policies, and leaders are recognizing that it’s a change that benefits both employees and organizations alike.

Traditional methods of leave management often put HR in a tough position, causing serious struggles to keep up with these new expectations and leading to unnecessary errors and stress on all parties.

The more leave policies employees expect from their organizations, the greater the burden is on HR to manage them.

Tilt’s 2025 Leave Benchmark Report shows how vital it is for high-growth organizations to leverage leave technology, which allows

HR to implement and manage more policies efficiently and reap the business benefits accordingly.

Of course, as policies expand, so does leave legislation. It has become untenable for HR to keep tabs on the evolution and tweaks to leave legislation, especially for organizations with employees in multiple states.

Predicting the future of leave also hinges on political ebbs and flows, which is a bit beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice it to say that election cycles also play a pivotal role in the shaping of policy that HR must respond to.

If you’re curious about what’s ahead, check out Vol 10. of The United State Leave Law Report for more details on the matter.

If you’ve ever managed a leave of absence from start to finish you know that leave management involves far more than granting time off according to some company policy and ensuring a return-to-work date.

Each leave includes a laundry list of interconnected tasks that are unique to each leave request because each employee requesting a leave is in a circumstance that’s unique. Nevertheless, the entire process must work in harmony regardless of the situation and include:

• Employee Communication: Guiding employees through their leave options, the necessary paperwork, and what to expect during their time away.
• Manager Coordination: Keeping managers informed about their team’s capacity and assisting with workload redistribution.
• Payroll Calculations and Adjustments: Ensuring accurate pay calculations, especially when state benefits or short-term disability come into play.
• Compliance Assurance: Navigating state-specific regulations, federal laws, and company policies to avoid compliance risks.
• Carrier Coordination: Collaborating with insurance carriers for claims and approvals.
• State Benefit Management: Filing and managing claims for state-provided benefits, which often require meticulous documentation.
• Adaptability: Leave dates can change, a parental leave can turn into a bereavement leave, or an employee might move to a different state in the middle of their leave.

Each of these tasks requires time, attention to detail, and follow-up. Even small missteps can create additional work, whether through correcting errors or managing employee dissatisfaction.

Workplace leave policies have come a long way from the days of simple vacation tracking.

Today, HR teams are tasked with navigating federal, state, and even local leave laws, all while accommodating diverse employee needs such as parental leave, medical leave, and caregiving responsibilities.
Employee policies are only expanding as competitive organizations increasingly look to emphasize employee needs outside of the workplace.

In addition to this, there are challenges in ensuring accurate payroll adjustments and maintaining compliance, and the cracks in manual systems become glaringly obvious.

Spreadsheets may have sufficed in simpler times, but they struggle to keep pace with the intricacies of modern leave management. Manual data entry, version control issues, and a lack of real-time updates often lead to mistakes that can ripple across an organization, affecting employees and business outcomes alike.

During a leave of absence, employees are not merely stepping away from their daily tasks. Oftentimes they’re navigating significant life changes and frequently they’re doing so for the first time.

These moments can run the gamut of emotions for your employees. From excitement to devastation to utter confusion. The truth is that these moments amplify how employees perceive their organization’s care, empathy, and efficiency.

Studies have shown that employees are 10x more critical of their organization during life events, but they’re also far more likely to feel connected to the organization if their leave is handled with empathy and precision.

Whether positive or negative, this amplification of perception positions leave management as a foundational moment in the employee lifecycle.

Unlike other milestones, a leave of absence goes beyond processes and policies; it touches the core of an employee’s personal life. Further, leaves of absence can be unpredictable in their timing, scope, and scale.

“This is real life, rubber hitting the road,” says Jen Henderson, Tilt CEO. “Babies, death of parents, injuries, medical, military…these things are highly emotional and highly impactful to that one person’s life. An organization has to pull events like this out of the regular employee lifecycle rhetoric. It is not that kind of milestone.”

When leave management is handled poorly and confusing processes, delayed responses, or a lack of empathy prevail, it can erode trust and undermine employee loyalty completely.

Conversely, when organizations demonstrate genuine care, clear communication, and streamlined processes, they build a sense of security and belonging which serve to strengthen that foundation and create resilience among the employee population.

After tracking leave data over a period of time, patterns emerge that are invaluable for forward planning. A dedicated leave management software can, for example, provide insights into the number of employees likely to take leave, seasonal trends, the frequency and average duration of different leave types, advanced notice to managers when an employee requests a leave, and the associated costs.

All of which equips HR leaders with the foresight to:

• Set Accurate Budgets: With a clear picture of historical leave costs, you can forecast expenses for the upcoming year. This helps secure the necessary financial resources to support employees while avoiding unexpected budget overruns.
• Prepare for Workforce Coverage: Knowing ahead of time when an employee plans to take a leave or upcoming seasons where you’ve historically seen an uptick in leaves enables better workforce planning. This ensures that critical roles remain covered, reducing disruptions to organizational goals.
• Gauge Employee Sentiment: The lead time employees provide before going on leave can reveal their comfort level with the process. A shorter notice period might indicate a hesitation to communicate leave needs, pointing to potential gaps in trust or policy clarity. Similarly, identifying employee turnover from those returning from leave will let you know if your leave process is effective.

Using these trends, HR teams can craft data-backed strategies that leadership simply hasn’t had at their disposal before. Modern leave management software holds the key to balancing operational needs with employee support.

Gone are the days when leave impacted your world merely as an administrative box to check. On the contrary, organizations and industries that do it well use their leave process as a secret weapon for strategizing workforce optimization, capitalizing on paid state benefit programs, reducing compliance risk, and keeping employee productivity and satisfaction at all-time highs.

Organizations that get this and leverage all modern leave processes have to offer are swooping up top talent (and retaining them) while everyone else is stuck wondering why their best employees keep walking out the door after a sub-par leave experience.

Investing in a modern leave management system signals that you’re ready to support your team through life’s big moments, and they’ll remember that.

Industries and organizations that treat leave as more of a necessary evil are seeing higher turnover, process and productivity inefficiencies, and a reputation of not being employee-friendly.

But the ones leaning into proactive leave strategies? They’re the organizations on the rise, showing employees they matter and reaping the rewards in loyalty and performance.

This isn’t just rhetoric, the numbers back it up.

Many organizations still rely on outdated methods to manage employee leave, so if you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey, that’s me!” rest assured you’re not alone.

Some adopt blanket policies to avoid compliance risks, leading to inefficiencies and overspending. For example, paying 100% of an employee’s leave because it’s simply too cumbersome to integrate government-sponsored programs like Paid Family Leave (PFL) can cost organizations thousands (or hundreds of thousands for larger organizations) annually.

Without the right tools, businesses risk wasting funds that could otherwise drive growth through initiatives like hiring, enhancing benefits, or upgrading technology.