Manual leave management can cause chaos with multiple team members, especially during peak periods like Christmas.
Leave Dates 'Multi-person request' feature can make the process extremely fast and error-free.
A great leave management system can save you time, resources and eliminate stress from your HR processes.
What’s the least efficient thing in the world? Repetition. Fortunately, we’re in the golden era for rooting out and eliminating repetitive tasks with clever tech. Our multi-person request feature is a perfect example.
Pete is the admin manager in the HR department of a busy bank head office. The office is buzzing, because Christmas is on its way! Pete is not buzzing. Why not? Also on its way: 50 leave requests, one for every member of staff, because the office is closed for two weeks over Christmas. To be booked (and therefore paid), each person’s holiday needs to be manually entered into the spreadsheet Pete uses to track leave, and then confirmed in writing via an email to the person concerned.
It's December 1st already, so Pete gets cracking.
Where to begin? He may as well work through alphabetically. Ah, isn’t Andrea already on maternity leave? He’ll have to check that. Hmm, Bob seems to have taken quite a lot of leave already, these Christmas dates will take him over his allowance. But the office will be closed, he can’t work. What to do? He’ll come back to it.
Connor, done. Debbie, done. Wait, was that Debbie H or Debbie S? Best go back and do it again just to be sure. An email pings back. “Undelivered: Debbie S no longer works at Big Bank Ltd.” Whoops, resend to Debbie H. Another email pings. “Hi, not sure why I’ve received this.” Uh oh, he’s CC’d Debbie’s whole department, is that a GDPR breach?!
December 31st. Pete finally hits send on the last email with bruised, aching fingers, and saves his trusty spreadsheet. He gets the message: Error. Document not saved. File corrupt. Snow falls outside.
All jokes aside, there are certain times of year when you’ll be flooded with leave requests for the same dates, or when everyone is off by default because the office is closed. But nothing kills the buzz of an upcoming celebration like hours spent repeating the same manual data entry task over, and over, and over… And god forbid you forget someone and they end up eating Christmas dinner alone at a dark desk.
Luckily, we’re not going to let you waste valuable time when we’ve got an easy workaround that doesn’t rely on anyone’s memory or a clunky spreadsheet. Leave Dates chews up all the admin of managing leave and spits out a streamlined system with a user-friendly interface that pretty much does it all for you. Comprehensive settings and permissions mean ongoing admin control is a breeze, and you have 24/7 access to step-by-step guides – so you’ll only ever have to learn and set something up once.
For multi-person leave requests, you need an admin user/approver (they have access to request leave for anyone/their direct reports). All they need to do is create a new leave request and then, in the dropdown menu under ‘Team Member’, select as many employees as you want/have access to. You can also select an entire department at once. Then, on the other side of the request form, you put in the relevant dates.
There’s no chance of error, as any issues – eg overlapping leave, someone has used up their leave allowance, or the bulk request will leave you under-staffed – will be flagged before you press ‘Book’. If you’re an approver for the relevant employees, you don’t even have to go back in to approve the leave, it will be done automatically. Once it’s booked and approved, everyone gets an email with their leave dates. Happy holidays!
Busy people need efficient solutions to perform at their best. This is critical to the bottom line, especially for SMEs and startups. Making things simple means tasks are more transferable, and they take up less time. Why should booking the same leave dates for multiple people take longer than booking it for one? No one wants to spend those busy weeks before Christmas tracking, approving and recording endless leave requests that are all going to be approved by default. Save your manual processing for writing the Christmas cards, where a human touch will be appreciated far more than it will in data entry!
Yes! Using Leave Dates, you can make bulk leave requests for multiple staff members as an account admin or designated approver.
This feature helps streamline holiday bookings in the event of office closures, company-wide downtime, etc., and allows for bulk processing, eliminating the need for manual entry.
Leave Dates checks for many different issues that may create a booking error, for example:
These issues are flagged before you confirm the booking to prevent possible mistakes.
No, you do not have to do approvals individually with Leave Dates.
Admins or approvers can automatically approve or decline any pending leave requests.