The Ultimate Time-Off Manager: 9 Ways to Enhance Your Vacation Time Approval Process

Time-off can help keep your workforce happy and healthy—but only if you schedule it using a clear policy and a methodical process.

9 Tips for Managing Time Off

Time off is vital to any business because it contributes to employee health and, consequently, overall company productivity. You must manage it efficiently so every team member can take a break and recharge or manage personal issues.

The following tips will help create a time-off management process that makes your workforce feel appreciated and valued.

1.  Prioritize Employee Vacation Time

Ensure your staff knows you value their time on the job and off. Emphasize that work is important, but so are their personal and family lives. Time off gives them a chance to balance both. Also, reassure employees that you won't penalize them for using vacation time but will celebrate how well they care for themselves and their loved ones.

2.  Establish Clear Guidelines

Don’t allow any confusion about how much vacation employees can take and when. You need a clearly communicated policy to protect your company and employees from chaos. You also can’t chastise a team member for taking too much time off if you’ve never stated how much they can take in the first place.  

Ensure your staff knows:

• How many vacation and sick days they get per year.
• When they can expect additional vacation days.
• How to submit requests.
• When they can and can’t request time off.
• Any important information related to your business.

Post this information in a visible place or store it in a company database that's accessible to all.

3.  Simplify the Request Submissions Process

Make life easy for you and your employees with an easy time-off request process. You could have workers hand in request forms manually, but they will either have to catch you sometime in the workday or leave the forms at your desk and hope they don't get lost.

Many companies handle these requests with a digital tool like NetSuite’s Time-Off Management feature. This time-off manager software gives employees access to time-off forms and ensures their requests are approved quickly.

4.  Determine How to Handle Overlapping Vacation Requests

Employees will inevitably vie for prime vacation times, particularly around the holidays. You need rules governing who gets time off so team members know why one request gets approved over another.

Many businesses set policies on a first-come-first-served basis or let seniority rule. Some even base it on employee flexibility. Your company needs to decide what method works best for your employees and maintains peace among your staff.

5.  Keep Requests Organized

Nothing can stoke staff discontent like lost time-off requests. That’s why companies create a system for organizing and storing request forms so they all get reviewed.  

For example, many use NetSuite’s time-off manager software, which offers a streamlined process for reviewing and approving requests so the task gets done promptly and no forms go astray. Time-off approvers also get request notifications immediately via email with a simple approve or reject button option.

6.  Allow for Emergencies

It would be nice if everyone knew exactly when they needed time off from their jobs. Sadly, kids break arms, family members get sick, and emergencies just pop up. Things happen, and your company must know how to accommodate them.

For example, you can assemble a list of part-time workers who can fill in when a full-time employee must miss work. Or you can offer incentives, such as guaranteed time off later, for workers who volunteer to take missed shifts.

With NetSuite’s Time-Off Management feature, employees can take pre-defined time off, like sick time, and the system will auto-approve it, updating available resources and calendars in real time. Managers can enter unplanned time off on behalf of their employees, as well.

7.  Let Employees Find Replacements

There’s no reason why your HR department must handle all time-off responsibilities. Let employees find their own replacements and lighten that burden.

Just remember to set guidelines for these replacements beforehand and state that management must approve all shift substitutions. You don’t want a warehouse picker substituting for an office assistant and vice versa.

8.  Offer Work-From-Home Options

Sometimes, employees don’t need time off—they just need time at home. For example, if your marketing specialist has a sick child, they may be able to complete projects from their house while caring for their little one.

Of course, this option doesn't work for every company or every position. Still, it may allow some workers to take care of their personal responsibilities without using vacation days. That benefits both the company and the employee

9.  Choose a Quality Time-Off Manager

You can handle time-off requests manually, but that’s not nearly as efficient as a digital option. There’s also no reason to fill your office with more forms and papers when many digital time-off managers exist.

NetSuite’s Time Off Management feature is an excellent tool for maintaining a well-run vacation approval process, especially if your company already uses NetSuite or is exploring enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The time-off manager is a feature of NetSuite’s ERP software. It helps companies manage employee vacation times according to their established policies. Users can:

• Create various time-off categories.
• Define your company’s time-off rules.
• Determine how the system adjusts these rules according to employee milestones.
• Establish eligibility and entitlement.
• Establish accruals according to hours worked or a fixed amount per period.
• Establish balance and carryover limits.
• Review and adjust time-off balances.

SuiteDynamics experts can answer questions about NetSuite’s time-off manager during a free consultation. You’ll discover how the software can mitigate administration snags and staff disagreements before they even start.  

Get a Time-Off Manager That Makes Employees and HR Happy

Time-off management can make employees feel respected and valued or cause strife in the office. It all depends on how you handle it.

We know how chaotic it can feel to process numerous vacation requests at once, ensuring that each employee gets a fair amount of time off without hampering company operations. It’s a puzzle few HR managers love to solve.

NetSuite's Time-Off Management feature offers companies a simple, organized way to handle vacation submissions, reviews, and approvals so no one feels overlooked or overworked. Explore the tool further during a free consultation with SuiteDynamics and discover a new way to show your staff how much you care.

We pull information from NetSuite material, SuiteDynamics experts, and other reliable sources to compose our blog posts and educational pieces. We ensure they are as accurate as possible at the time of writing. However, software evolves quickly, and although we work to maintain these posts, some details may fall out of date. Contact SuiteDynamics experts for the latest information on NetSuite ERP systems.