Travel takes Time

For any government with offices spread around the country it’s even worse – in some cases employees need to drop off their printed leave requests at a regional office, which is often far from where they actually work. This means using a car to get their leave form where it needs to go, which is sometimes hundreds of kilometres away. In the process they are spending time and money on fuel and wear and tear on government vehicles just to request time off.

In such a context a paper-based process just doesn’t make sense. Especially when a digital fix is readily available.

A digital leave system is far more efficient than any paper-based process, as there is much less to be done on both the employee and manager’s side to complete the process.

Digitisation Benefits

In a good digital leave process, employees access an HR-focused application on their smartphone, where they simply navigate to the leave section and put in their request. This is immediately routed to the correct manager, who receives an alert on their phone. That request can be compared to the number of days owing, which the application automatically tracks, and an answer can be given to the employee within minutes. Should the request not receive input from the manager within a specified time frame, it can be automatically escalated so that it receives the attention it needs.

Throughout that process no travel is needed, no forms can be lost, and busy managers don’t miss the request because it’s not buried in a pile of paper. In a digital leave system, accrued leave is also accurately tracked so that employees know exactly how many days they are owed; this has implications when employees leave the organisation and must have their accumulated leave paid out. If that tally is inaccurate, and employees appear to have more leave days than they would have, organisations stand to lose a lot of money when paying out that leave.

eLeave to the rescue

Boxfusion’s eLeave solution has been developed with all of this in mind. It’s part of the company’s SmartGov suite of tools, and it monitors and manages leave on behalf of the organisation.

Currently deployed inside the Department of Employment and Labour, among others, eLeave is making it possible for the leave process to be smooth and fast inside such organisations.

In the Department of Employment and Labour, the use of eLeave has reduced the time it takes for leave requests to be approved from several months to less than 8 hours on average, and saved the Department money on their paper bill.

Employees are happy because their leave requests are dealt with quickly, and the organisations are happy because they can accurately track leave and know their leave situation at a glance. That they also save money is just icing on the cake.

The importance of digitisation

And this is why digitisation is so important: it benefits everyone, from employees to managers to CFOs and CEOs. It makes day-to-day business processes cheaper, faster, and easier to manage, gives accurate data that organisations can leverage to make better decisions, and provides access to the kind of services that meet employees’ needs and make them feel like they’re a part of something special. There’s really no reason for anyone to be using paper-based processes in 2021, especially when it comes to leave. Get in touch with Boxfusion and digitise your leave application process today.