To all the frustrated HR and People Ops pros from across the land, welcome! If you’ve come to this article, there’s a good chance you might be experiencing one of (or all of) the following symptoms:
- Bloated budgets from ineffective legacy leave management systems
- Compliance cold sweats from inaccurate FMLA and leave tracking spreadsheets
- Eye-strain from late-night leave law Google Searches
- Email evasion due to an ever-growing number of employee support questions
- Overflowing swear jars due to inconsistent and inefficient carrier support
If this sounds like you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re like the countless HR and People Ops pros confounded by the complexity of consistent leave management and are fed up with the inadequate tools at your disposal.
Below we’ll cover why consistency is important and how you can use modern leave of absence technology to achieve consistent administering of your leave policies no matter the leave type, across the country.
Why is Consistent Leave Management Important?
Whether it’s improving your golf swing or making a bisque, consistency is paramount. The same can be said for managing leaves of absence, only mucking up an employee’s parental leave can have a significant negative impact on both your employee and your organization (not to underscore the tragedy of a botched bisque).
Not only does consistent leave management ensure your organization is adhering to federal, state, and local regulations, but consistent leave management also promotes fairness and equity among employees, preventing potential discrimination or favoritism. Those not only can cause employee morale to plummet but can also find your organization facing legal ramifications that are not cheap (the average FMLA lawsuit runs a $78,000 bill on average).
On the flip side, consistently administering your leaves fosters a positive work environment, increasing employee morale, retention, and productivity. By establishing clear policies and procedures, you can dramatically enhance your organization’s operational efficiency, reducing administrative errors and the risk of unintentional non-compliance.
Essentially, consistent leave of absence management is a cornerstone of legal compliance, workplace fairness, and overall organizational success.
Expecting overworked HR and People Ops teams to accomplish this across a variety of outdated and decentralized management systems and spreadsheets is a cornerstone of endless frustration and failed employee support when they need it most.
What it Means to Manage All Leave Types
From FMLA to FAMLI, managing all leave types efficiently and consistently requires an in-depth knowledge of rules, regulations and requirements of federal, state and local leave laws. Similarly, managing things like Short-Term Disability (STD), bereavement leave, parental leave or any leave policy your organization may provide your employees requires laying out clear and consistent guidelines for employees regardless of the type of leave they need, accurate tracking (more on that later) and payroll, rapid employee support, and secure documentation.
Many organizations might have one system for tracking FMLA, another for STD, another for state benefits, and another still for company-provided benefits. When a tangled web of systems that don’t talk to one another it’s a near impossibility for HR teams to provide a consistent experience for all employees, no matter the leave.
A leave-of-absence management solution like Tilt not only securely manages all of your organization-specific leave types, but is backed by an in-house team of leave law experts who have their finger on the pulse of leave law evolutions across the nation. Tilt’s leave plans provide a consistent experience by walking your employees through their specific leave journey, no matter the leave.
One system to rule them all. One system to consistently educate, guide, track, and support employees throughout the entirety of their leave journey. One system to alleviate those symptoms above and streamline your organization’s operations so you reach and exceed your business objectives while supporting your employees better than ever before.
Technology That Integrates And Tracks Leaves of Absence Easily
Consistently administering your leaves is only part of the equation. Yes, it’s important to know that your employees are getting the information and support they need as they embark on a potentially trying time in their lives. As an organization, however, it’s vital that you have the tools in place to comprehensively track your leaves in real-time so you know what employees are on leave, what benefits they’re entitled to, what programs they’re protected by, how many hours of FMLA (if eligible) they have remaining, start dates, stop dates…all of it.
If the thought of consistently managing this internally with spreadsheets seems nightmarish, Tilt is your warm cup of chamomile that puts your worries to bed.
Tilt pulls data from your HRIS system to ensure your employee data is accurate, and provides a holistic HR dashboard that gives you a comprehensive overview of all your leaves in real-time. It provides everything you need to know who is on leave and important data like how many FMLA hours an employee has remaining. You can even export your organizational leave information easily.
If your employees have a question, they get 1-1 access to a dedicated (no round-robin call centers!) Leave Success Manager who can navigate and queries that may arise. We even work directly with your carrier to smooth out any process road bumps they previously may have caused.
Tilt even gives you accurate and consistent payroll information. Speaking of…
Consistent and Accurate Payroll For Employee Leave
A critical and increasingly frustrating aspect of managing all leave types is reconciling payroll. Payroll needs accurate information on how much your employees are getting paid while out on leave, and depending on the leave type the amount and sources may vary. Today that might look like sleuthing through manually updated spreadsheets and hoping the payment amounts are correct based on potentially incomplete information.
TIlt updates and adjusts payroll information for you, so you can consistently manage one of the most important elements of an employee leave to your employee. Financial concerns are top of mind for employees when going on leave, and Tilt’s solution alleviates those concerns by spelling it out for them. From the employee dashboard, they’ll know exactly how much pay they can expect and where the money is coming from.
From the HR and payroll perspective (Payroll gets access to tilt too!), we break down all aspects of a leave as it pertains to pay to help ensure any top-up amounts get paid accurately and consistently. All the reports are exportable and supportive of multiple pay schedules, and you and your payroll team have the ability to close the pay period out within the platform.
Manage Leaves of Absence Nationwide
You know that old HR adage, “More states, more problems?” The truth is that managing all leave types not only requires tracking and administering different types of leaves consistently for all employees, it also requires an understanding of the variety of benefits different states provide. Sometimes employers might not even know where their employees reside, let alone know all the benefits, laws and regulations that may apply to an employee’s leave of absence given the state they live in.
When managing all leave types internally, HR and People Ops pros are often left with Googling leave laws for a state they’d never think to visit and relying on the compliance-risk-riddled spreadsheet for tracking.
TIlt’s ability to remove the guesswork and support all leave types no matter the type or state gives you the holistic leave management solution to consistently and effectively manage your leaves.
Consistently Manage All Leave Types with Tilt
No more bloated budgets, no more compliance concerns, no more late-night leave law searches, no more email inundation, and no more having to manage carrier relationships.
Leave your leaves to Tilt and let us manage all your leaves consistently, easily, compliantly, and efficiently. No matter the leave type. No matter the state.
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.
