Managing leaves of absence is like navigating the intricacies of a Swiss watch.
Every gear, spring, and hand must work together with precision to keep time accurately. Just as a watchmaker’s craftsmanship ensures seamless synchronization, HR teams need finely tuned systems to manage leave schedules, compliance, and employee needs.
When leave management runs smoothly, time is easy to track accurately. But when even a single cog in the watch falters, the ripple effect can cause missteps, delays, and costly errors.
Without the right tools or strategy, leave management becomes less like a precise timepiece and more like a spider’s web—sticky, tangled, and nearly impossible to escape. Missing a compliance deadline, Googling responses to employee questions, or mishandling a leave request can trap your organization in a web of legal risks, employee dissatisfaction, and wasted time and resources.
With so many moving pieces and possible outcomes, it can be difficult to keep track of just how much time you’re spending on your leave program.
The key to avoiding this sticky situation is recognizing that leave management isn’t just about keeping time; it’s about getting it right with consistency and predictability, so you can properly evaluate the time you spend and allocate efforts accordingly.
Spreadsheets and siloed systems can make this nearly impossible of course. With the right systems in place, however, HR can move beyond survival mode and leverage using automated processes and leave data to drive strategy, resilience and transformation.
The Multifaceted Nature of Leave Management
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.
Quantifying the Time: Easier Said Than Done
For many HR teams, it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly how much time is spent managing leave. The variability in leave cases—from straightforward maternity leave to complex medical absences spanning multiple months—adds to the challenge.
Conversations may range from quick updates to lengthy discussions requiring multiple follow-ups. Tracking these touchpoints often falls by the wayside, leaving HR leaders with only rough estimates of the time investment.
However, real industry insights from leave experts like Tilt provide a clearer picture. On average, properly managing a single leave of absence takes 20 to 25 hours. This includes:
- Initial consultations with the employee and manager.
- Coordinating actions among HR, payroll, and benefits teams.
- Ensuring compliance with all applicable regulations.
- Communicating with external carriers and state benefit programs.
- Communicating with employees when there isn’t clarity
- Reintegrating employees back into the fold upon return
This time investment may vary from case to case but is significant, particularly for smaller HR teams already stretched thin by competing priorities.
Why Getting Leave Right Matters
The time spent on leave management isn’t just about hours logged; it’s about the opportunity cost for your HR team (especially HR teams of 1) and identifying inefficiencies that may be causing poor employee experiences. Here’s why it matters:
- Focus on Strategic Initiatives: Every hour spent on leave management is an hour not spent on strategic projects that can help drive the organization forward.
- Employee Experience: Timely, accurate, and empathetic communication during leave sets the tone for an employee’s experience and impacts their perception of the organization. Tilt’s 2025 Leave Benchmark Report shows that a better leave experience leads to lower turnover and greater productivity.
- Compliance Risk: Mismanaged leave can lead to legal complications, fines, and damage to the company’s reputation. Compliance takes time if you’re managing leave manually or with an outdated solution, but is non-negotiable.
- Cost Implications: Inefficient leave management—including errors in pay or benefit coordination—can lead to financial losses.
The Role of a Leave Management Company
Given the complexity and time commitment, many HR leaders turn to a leave management company like Tilt to alleviate the burden. Tilt specializes in streamlining the leave process by:
- Automating leave plans, payroll, and routine tasks to minimize human error.
- Acting as a centralized communication and information hub for all stakeholders.
- Ensuring compliance with federal and state regulations.
- Coordinating with carriers and assisting in state benefit filings.
By leveraging a leave management company, HR teams can reclaim hours otherwise spent on manual processes while delivering a greater level of service for employees in their time of need.
This not only reduces the immediate workload but also equips HR with the bandwidth to focus on strategic contributions that drive organizational success.
The Real Cost of Manual Leave Management
Without the right tools, managing leave manually isn’t just time-intensive—it’s costly. The inefficiencies add up, from missed deadlines and payroll errors to strained employee relationships. For HR, the ability to shift from reactive, manual processes to proactive, automated solutions is transformative.
By partnering with a leave management company like Tilt, organizations can leverage a secure software platform to manage leave all under one digital roof. This will reduce the time spent on leave administration while improving accuracy and employee satisfaction.
The result is a win-win you can set your watch to: HR teams are freed to tackle high-impact projects, and employees receive the support they need during critical life moments.
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.
