If you’re a startup that’s recently emerged, it can take awhile to figure out an efficient way to keep track of so many things – team meetings, tasks assigned, varying time-zones, and so many important factors play a role in the making of a good startup.
But sometimes, even the smaller aspects can affect the smooth running of the company if it isn’t managed well, such as managing the time-off of each employee.
Though this doesn’t seem like a big deal when compared to other issues – there are many problems that can be caused when a startup lacks the proper system to manage the holidays and days taken off by employees.
In this article, we’re going to be talking about why a time-management system is important for startups, how you can implement something similar in your startup, and how not having a system affects the entire company, especially during remote work. Let’s get started!
Time-Management Tools Simplify Everything
Most companies try to make do with old-school ways of keeping track of everyone’s time off – either it’s through, email, a message left on your team’s collaboration chat tool, word-of-mouth, or simply putting in a word with the manager before you leave for a week-long vacation.
While none of these are wrong, there can be many hiccups in the team due to the inefficiency of the processes.
For instance, a co-worker may have planned to collaborate with you on a shared project this week, but wouldn’t be aware that you were even going to be on leave, or your boss may have forgotten about you mentioning your vacation week a month ago and would’ve texted you first thing on Monday to get some work sorted out, or even worse, a tight deadline depends on your feedback and your entire team is counting on you to get it done because none of them knew you were off on a particular day.
Whatever the reason, it’s hard to get some well-deserved time off when you don’t have a way to keep everyone in the loop about your plans.
That’s why it’s important, especially for a new startup where things are bound to be a little shaky or rough around the edges, to implement something like an employee time off manager – this will enable everyone whom you work with to know when you’re going to be unavailable and plan their meetings and deadlines accordingly.
Remote Work Is Hard – There’s No Reason to Make it Harder
Though the world has fallen in love with the remote-work model since 2020, teams who collaborate and build together are definitely at a set-back when it comes to complete remote work.
This is because they need to depend on online calls and chats to get all their work done, which would be fine to a certain extent, but would get hard if contacting the other person seems impossible.
For instance, most of the critical work in the company is done by smaller core teams who work together to finish a task. But this would come to a standstill if one or more members seems to be unavailable on random days each month.
Not only will this make work feel frustrating for the rest of the team, but it will make it impossible to have good collaborative sessions where everyone is present all at once.
That’s why it helps to keep everyone informed about days when people are going to be out of office, or even if they’re going to be missing for half the day due to emergencies.
Get Rid of Last-Minute Chaos
It’s common knowledge that a company can’t run if 90% of its employees are on vacation — at the same time. Even though this seems like a low-probability occurrence, there’s always a chance where everyone would rush up to make use of their saved up off-days around November and December.
Though there’s nothing wrong with many employees taking time off during the holiday season, it wouldn’t make sense if everyone leaves at the same time – what would the rest of the people do, and who’ll take care of customer care and communication?
For this reason, it makes sense to have a platform where you’ll be able to have a comprehensive view of who’s going to be on leave, which department or role they belong to, how many people from the same department are going on leave at the same time, and so on — this will help managers plan in advance and even find a way to give different teams alternating time-offs to make sure there’s no chaos or confusion.
Managing Requests Becomes Easier
If you’re a manager or lead, you definitely have better things to do than reply to individual chats from various employees about why they need to take some time off.
Instead, having a time-management software will enable you to either approve or decline requests as and when an employee sends them to you.
