Leave is an essential aspect of people management. Every employee needs to take time off to handle personal responsibilities and strike a better balance between their personal and professional lives. Rigid leave policies that don’t allow employees to use their leave can decrease productivity, satisfaction, and creativity, especially at a time when the world is facing a crisis. Over time, this can put your organization at a serious disadvantage due to employee turnover and other severe financial consequences. That’s why organizations should be prudent about their leave policies and act in a way that accommodates employee’s needs.
This is where Leave Grant, a new feature in Zoho People, truly shines. In this article, we explain the basics of Leave Grant and how your organization can best use it.
What is Leave Grant?
Leave Grant in Zoho People is a new feature recently introduced under our Leave Management System. With Leave Grant, employees can request special leave types that are not part of their usual leave benefits, including sick leave, casual leave, on duty, privileged leave, etc.
As per their labor laws, every organization is required to provide a fixed number of sick and casual leave days based on the region they belong to. Leaves requested through Leave Grant are usually not mandatory and organizations approve them on a case-to-case basis. Maternity leave, Paternity Leave, Child Care Leave, etc. are some of the many leave types that can be requested through Leave Grant.
Why use Leave Grant for your organization?
Leave Grant can be useful for organizations that want to do away with rigid leave policies and accommodate special leave requests from employees. This is especially useful when employees require special leaves like bereavement leave, child care leave, sabbatical leave, or have exhausted all of their allotted leave time.
For example, employees affected by COVID-19 may require a minimum of two weeks of leave to recover. This may not be covered under the usual sick leave category. In this case, you can configure Leave Grant for COVID and affected employees can request for Leave Grant if they or a family member got sick.
When this is approved, COVID leaves will be credited to their account and they can apply for leave as usual. This way, their traditional sick and casual leaves will remain intact. Leave Grant provides employees with the flexibility to take leave according to their needs with suitable permissions from their organization. When organizations go out of their way to better meet employee needs, they will be more engaged, happy, and productive.
How does Leave Grant work in Zoho People?
Configuring Leave Grant in Zoho People is as simple as configuring a new leave type.
Here’s how:
Step 1: Configuring Leave Grant
When configuring Leave Grant, all you have to do is:
Give a name for the new leave type
Specify whether it is paid or unpaid
Select Leave Grant and define its validity, and
Select the unit.
After this, you’ll able to define the restrictions that apply to employees who request Leave Grant to keep the whole process streamlined. For instance, you can specify the minimum and maximum limit for requests, the maximum number of requests that can be applied within a particular period, the minimum interval between two requests, and many more.
Once this is done, you can define employees who are eligible for applying for Leave Grant based on their location, role, designation, department, etc.
Step 2: Defining the approval
Based on your organizational policies, you can set up an approval process to manage Leave Grant requests. You can either configure the approver or auto-approve requests that meet the restrictions you defined in the first step.
Step 3: Applying for Leave Grant
Once the Leave Grant is configured, applicable employees can request for Leave Grant by filling in the details mentioned in the below screenshot. Their request will not get through as long as it is consistent with the restrictions that you define in the first step.
For instance, if you have specified the maximum limit for requests, your employees will not be able to submit their request if the number of Leave Grant Days requested exceeds the specified limit.
Step 4: Approving or Rejecting Leave Grant
If you have enabled approvals for Leave Grant, the request submitted by your employees will either go to the defined approver or be auto-approved/rejected. If the Leave Grant request is approved, leave will be credited to your employee’s account and they can apply for the leave as usual. If the request is rejected, they won’t be able to take leave.
Wrapping Up
To balance their professional and personal commitments, your employees will sometimes require special types of leaves. How you manage these requests can make or break employee engagement. Leave Grant in Zoho People works helps you manage requests that are outside the usual entitlements.
Every special leave can be tracked, approved, and recorded inside Zoho People. Learn more about how Leave Grant works inside Zoho People and how you can implement the same in your organization.
Give this feature a try and let us know how this is beneficial to your organization in the comments section below. If you have any queries regarding Leave Grant, please feel free to write to support@zohopeople.com.
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