Managing human resources is not an easy task, especially if you are running a small-sized business or a startup. And when it comes to complex and touchy issues such as managing leaves or framing/changing a company leave policy, things can often get murky and make all the stakeholders uncomfortable. In addition to remunerations, many a candidate takes into account the leave policy of a company before joining. Thus, company leave policy and leave management are one of the biggest challenges in HR management.
Leave Policy
The world has become more compact, diverse, and multicultural. This has affected the way employees take leaves as many people like to celebrate (and sometimes not celebrate) different types of holidays. Thus, it has become imperative for organizations to have flexible leave policies. The challenge facing the senior management and the HR department is to have policies that would keep everyone happy, their customers and the employees.
When we incorporated an advanced leaves feature in sumHR, the HR management software, we researched over 20 types of different leave policies present in India. Labor laws are complex in India, but the same can be said about many other countries too. With the advent of globalization, there has been an increase in the number of startups and small businesses who have global operations or have offices in more than two countries. Thus, developing a leave policy that would keep everyone happy is a very complex task for HR departments in such global startups.
Leave Management
Over the years, HR policies of organizations have changed and evolved. There are numerous types of policies and managing such humongous data becomes very difficult. Different companies have different sets of rules. Some allow clubbing of different types of rules while some frown upon the very thought of it. In India, small businesses follow diverse styles of work-week, 5.5 days or 5 days. A few have an arrangement where they work only for certain Saturdays of the month.
It is a nightmare to manage leave data that has so many different variables. Using spreadsheets to track it is not a good idea, unless are a guru in using MS Excel. As leaves are directly related to payroll and requires coordination with the finance department (in most cases, an external firm), it is necessary that the whole process is error-free. Leave management, hence, is one of the biggest challenges in HR. It is advisable to use an HR software for leave management.
Company leave policy and leave management are just one of the few things that pose a challenge to HR management in startups and small businesses. We will have a look at other challenges in HR management in our future posts. Keep watching this space!
Want to share your experiences in framing a leave policy or managing leaves? Share it in the comments section below.
