One workflow instead of email and paper
Leave management software handles two things at once, filing employee leave and settling it. An employee submits a request in one place, and the request then travels a set path.
The solution described here was built on the Lotus Domino platform, a document workflow environment. The platform itself matters less than what happens on it. What counts is the flow, meaning who files the request, who sees it, who approves it and what happens once it is approved.
Staff data comes from a single source
The system uses an employee database supplied by the HR department. It looks like a detail, and it is one of the more important decisions in the whole setup.
When the list of people comes from HR, no second list has to be maintained by hand. A new employee does not have to be created twice, and someone who has left the company does not linger in the leave system.
Absence types decide how a request travels
Flexible configuration allows absence types to be defined, and each type sets out how a leave request should be handled.
This is the heart of the whole solution. Absences differ from one another, so they do not have to follow the same path. Annual leave planned well in advance and leave on demand filed the same day are, in practice, two different matters.
A rule written into the configuration once then applies to every request. Nobody works out again who the request should be sent to.
An approved request goes back to HR
An approved leave request is passed automatically to the HR department for settlement.
That is where the loop closes. Nobody retypes data from an email into the HR system, which also removes the classic point where a request approved by a manager gets lost on its way to settlement.
What to look at when choosing
The mechanics described above produce a short list of questions to put to a provider:
- where the list of employees comes from and whether it has to be maintained a second time,
- whether your own absence types can be defined or the set is fixed,
- whether the approval path comes from the configuration or from whoever the employee types in,
- what happens to a request after approval and whether settlement means retyping data,
- which platform the system runs on and who maintains that platform.
The last question is worth asking at the start rather than at the end. A workflow system lives for as long as somebody looks after the environment it runs on.