When we call something “epic” we’re often drawing attention to the qualities that make a thing heroic, majestic, or impressively great. In that vein, this blog’s epic ambition is to demonstrate that by improving your leave process and employee experience your entire organization will feel the heroic, majestic, and impressively great benefits that come along with it.
From an outsider’s perspective, it’s understandable to view a leave of absence as merely a two-way transaction. There’s an employee who needs to take time away from work for a personal reason, and there’s the employer who facilitates that leave of absence.
How much more complicated can it possibly be? Well if you’re reading this then you likely know…it’s a lot more complicated.
Especially if your processes are manual or your current solution just isn’t getting the job done.
When a leave goes right, the impact a single one can have on an organization is still felt across:
- The employee’s team, who is now short one member
- Payroll who is trying to not over or underpay the employee
- The customer who could experience a dip in your organization’s output and support
- HR who have to allocate team resources to support the employee
- Other departments who may be asked to pick up the slack
When a leave goes wrong every impact above still applies, but you can add:
- Legal and compliance potentially being brought in because of a mishandled leave (for example if there’s a discrimination claim)
- Operational efficiencies suffer
- Employee pay may be misappropriated
- The employee might not return to work after leave, losing institutional knowledge, and facing the costs associated with replacement.
- Internal and external reputational damage
- HR teams are all hands on deck for damage control
Tilt Recap: A single leave of absence has an undeniable ripple effect throughout an organization that extends well beyond the employee taking the leave. If your processes are manual or your solution isn’t effective, you increase the risk of a leave going badly and creating even larger waves that can come crashing down.
Is Your Leave Process Sinking Your Organization?
With the ripple effects of a single leave of absence outlined above, let’s unpack why leave is so complicated and how your existing processes likely aren’t setting you up for success.
Leave is a complicated affair because it’s a human affair, but it’s also an administrative and legislative affair that introduces complexities the more leave policies you offer (which best-in-class organizations strive to do) and the more states your employees reside in.
The United States is the only industrialized nation (other than Papua New Guinea) that doesn’t have a paid national leave program for new parents. As such, 13 (and counting) states have taken it upon themselves to provide this benefit to their residents.
“One of the reasons why we’ve created a technical solution,” said Jen Henderson, CEO of the leave management solution Tilt, on a recent episode of the Modern People Leaders Podcast, “is of course all 13 states have done it a little differently. Our poor HR partners are pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to support a leave in California vs. New York, or Colorado. It’s become incredibly complex…and that’s with only 13 states having programs.”
Most HR teams aren’t equipped with an effective solution to compliantly handle the burden of navigating these state programs, let alone the day when 20 states have programs, or all 50.
It’s so complicated and cumbersome that even though employers are paying into these programs as required by law, they either:
- Don’t have the bandwidth to support their employee population, leaving them to fend for themselves
- Pay employees 100% of their salary while on leave to not have to deal with it (a commendable approach, but an extremely costly one for employers who are choosing to not offset payroll with these state benefits)
- Burden HR with the responsibility of helping employees navigate these state programs, which are always evolving, and are different in every state.
Of course, navigating leave laws and state benefits programs is only one fraction of the leave of absence administrative picture for HR.
From building out personalized leave plans and guiding employees through their journey, there are countless ways for your leave process to get stuck in the mud or veer off the rails.
For one, HR is expected to answer a litany of questions that employees may have about their leave that HR pros may or may not be qualified to answer. This creates a tremendous amount of pressure on HR to respond promptly with correct information and derails team productivity every time one of these unexpected questions pops up.
Then there’s the tracking of leaves and updating changes that occur mid-leave. If HR teams are leveraging spreadsheets or across multiple systems this all has to be done manually, which is prone to human error and inconsistencies.
If that weren’t enough, managers also need to be empathetic and compliant stewards of the leave experience, and then of course there is trying to get a handle on payroll.
“With the complexity of leave I have absolutely seen the tipping point,” Jen adds. “There is no spreadsheet that can figure out a way to track, organize, and accurately respond to the over 400 permutations of leaves of absence. It’s just untenable.”
Tilt Recap: With the complex nature of leave and the ever-growing list of leave laws (bookmark Tilt’s Quarterly Leave Law Reports to stay in the know), the deck is stacked against HR to deliver the empathetic support employees need during leave. The administrative complexities create stress and frustration for HR, uncertainty for employees, and negative consequences throughout the organization.
A Better Leave Process is Better For Humans And Better For Business
What does a better leave process look like? Depending on your current situation you might be thinking, “Anything is an improvement over what I’m stuck with now,” and you might be right.
An effective leave process should:
- Remove administrative burdens from overworked HR teams
- Simplifies the leave journey for employees
- Provide human support for employees when empathy is paramount
- Automate manual processes like tracking and payroll adjustments
- Informs managers and removes biases
- Safely secure data and documentation
Tilt’s software solution to leave management offers simple, personalized leave plans for employees no matter the leave type and no matter the state. The platform delivers accurate and automated leave tracking for HR, automated pay adjustments for payroll, and manager education to keep managers in the loop (and out of trouble).
Take a walk around our HR dashboard and see for yourself:
Tilt understands that since leaves are first and foremost a human situation, human support is a must for any employee needing a leave. Tilt’s cohort of in-house leave fanatics provides every HR team and every employee taking a leave with dedicated and empathetic support, acting as an extension for People Teams across the country.
Tilt empowers HR teams to deliver on their organizational objectives while alleviating the stress and frustration of having to manage leaves of absence.
Tilt has provided a partnership that serves as an extension of our company’s People team to ensure our compliance with local leave regulations, while also helping our team members maximize and fully understand the benefits they’ll receive through our company’s policies and their local municipalities.
The ripple effect of a better leave process is as epic as advertised.
For the employee, a better leave process reduces the risk of confusion and resentment throughout the leave journey and provides the employee with timely, accurate, and empathetic support from a human when needed. A properly supported leave helps employers foster a culture of trust and care when employees need it most all while maintaining compliance.
Employees return to work more engaged and prepared to continue driving the business forward.
The experience I had with Tilt was OUTSTANDING! I greatly appreciate the Tilt team, especially my Leave Success Manager, Nic, for helping me throughout my leave. The only thing I had to focus on was getting better!
For HR, a better leave process reduces the stress, frustration, and feelings of being overwhelmed due to the unpredictable and complex nature of leaves, which are on the rise. HR teams will spend less time navigating administrative hurdles and manual data entry, and have more time to drive organizational initiatives forward when the effort isn’t spent on manual or ineffective leave management processes.
As a fully remote company operating in over 20 states Tilt has saved us so much time in research, compliance, employee conversations, and payroll calculations. Instead of balancing these activities with other responsibilities, we can focus on more strategic and culture-building initiatives!
For the organization, a better leave process manages leaves at scale, creates efficiencies in workforce planning, improvements in employee satisfaction and retention, and fewer compliance and reputational risks.
Our previous solution was not able to scale with our business, especially as our location and employee needs became more complex as we’ve grown. We now can place more energy and focus into other areas of the business, thanks to all the time saved by Tilt.
Tilt Recap: Trusting leave experts like Tilt to help your organization facilitate an easy, effective and empathetic approach to leaves of absence has an incredibly positive ripple effect throughout organizations. The more your team relies on manual processes and outdated systems to manage leaves, the greater the likelihood your team is burnt out, stressed out, and at a disadvantage in supporting employees when they need it most. Ride the wave to a world of better leave management with Tilt and feel the epic effects throughout your organization.
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.
