"How much vacation time do I have?" "How much time will I have for my summer vacation?" Ask any seasoned HR professional and they will tell you that these are all too frequent questions.

The reason is simple. Employees do not keep track of the time they have taken. This seems to be true even when the accrued amount is posted on each paycheck stub. The problem compounds when there are multiple "paid time off" accounts such as vacation, sick, etc.

For the average HR department, working from a paper system, the response could take a day or more while the HR representative checks their EXCEL notebook or refers the request to the accounting department. Either way, it is time consuming for one or two employees to get the answer in a timely manner…and time is money.

Manually tracking benefits can be contentious at best. All it takes is one mistake, be it a forgotten entry or a data entry error, for the accrual and usage accounting to cause strife and ill will. Again, ask those who have experienced working in both manual and automated environments, and they will agree that while time tracking is a fundamental and fairly simple task, it is full of problems when done manually. Non-HR managers are inconsistent or forgetful, not willfully, but from a point of job focus.

Imagine this
An employee goes to a kiosk located centrally in the company facilities. It is 2:35 a.m. on Saturday morning, the employee logs in and requests vacation time for a future date. He logs off and unseen wheels start turning.

Imagine again
Monday morning his manager finds an email with the employee’s vacation request. He reviews his scheduling for conflicts. Finding none, he clicks a button to verify that the employee has the accrued time. Seeing that all is in order, he accepts the request and all pertinent records in the HR system are updated as well as an email back to the employee telling him of the approval.

Impossible?
Not with People-Trak Employee and Manager Self-Service (ESS/MSS) . With the ESS/MSS option, the process almost runs itself. In addition, you can be assured that all necessary approvals are made and that all notifications are sent.