Love Them and Leave Them

You can bet that Doris Day didn't play hooky very often

There are a lot of “I’s” in RightSite, but that doesn’t mean we are not all about team.  And since building our team and managing our staff effectively is out top priority at RightSite, we put a lot of time into human resources management.

Some of this HR management is fun and interesting — like our weekly training sessions on web technologies.  And then some of it is as mundane as recording leave days. But boring tasks need like recording staff leave need to get done, and are important for a number of reasons.

• Keeping careful track of staff leave will show your team that you value their presence
• Recording leave days properly not only saves the company money, but reinforces the rewards to your top performers
• Maintaining a detailed log of leave time can help managers to identify discouraged employees before a situation becomes critical

One of the rules of management that I have seldom seem documented clearly but which is apparent to anyone who has ever managed a team is that happy employees take fewer days off.  While there are many types of leave available to team members, what we are most interested in is the total number of days taken off per month, regardless of whether it is vacation leave, sick leave or “my dog got hit by a bus leave.”  If a manager sees a sudden surge in the number of leave days taken by an individual or a group of people on the team, then you can be reasonably certain that staff turnover is about to increase.

To help us keep track of our staff leave days at RightSite, we have developed some very simple tools that I would like to share with you here:

• Leave request form – this form is to be filled out by all staff for every hour of leave taken (no exceptions)
• Annual leave calculator — this spreadsheet shows the number of hours of annual leave (vacation) used by an employee to date and the number of hours still available
• Leave log — this form shows the total amount of leave (in all leave categories) that an employee has used in a month, and over their current contract period

All of these forms are available for download and for viewing online via Scribd.com.

By using these forms properly, managers can be sure that their team is following the company’s leave guidelines, and quickly identify team members who may be losing interest in their work. Whether you choose to use this as a basis for some punitive weeding out or more proactive management practices is up to you.

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