Off-the-Grid: Leave Policies that Work

WorkCentive || May 30, 2024

Your star employee is out of commission!

Whether it be taking care of family, attending jury duty, or having a medical emergency, employees may take Leave of Absences (LOAs) throughout their career. Respecting the work-life balance in our colleagues' lives is essential for both employee satisfaction and retention. While the challenges we face in life are sometimes unpredictable, the Leave of Absence policies in your company should not be! Although granting time off may seem straightforward, it is crucial to carefully evaluate the broader impact on your sales team.

Let’s consider the following:
        
  • ‘What kind of LOAs are there, and why do they matter?’
  • ‘Who are the Key Stakeholders who should be consulted for LOA?’
  • ‘What are important considerations when managing LOA policies?’
  • ‘How does a well-automated LOA policy help day-to-day processes?’
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Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? No worries, because we are here to help!

Common Types of LOAs

While laws regarding LOAs differ in every state and province, there are a few common recurring types of leave that occur. It is important to understand the legal requirements of LOA policies before creating guidelines for your firm. Those include the following:
        
  • Maternity, Paternity, and Parental Leave
  • Compassionate Care and Bereavement
  • Medical Illness and Critical Illness
  • Personal Leave (Whether Paid or Unpaid)
A comprehensive LOA policy is very important for businesses to ensure that employees can have ease of mind when they need to take time off to care for their personal lives. Work-Life Balance is greatly improved when professionals understand that their team will take care of business while they are gone, and that they will still be paid on time.

Key Stakeholders of LOA Policies

There are many considerations when creating comprehensive Leave of Absence policies for your company, such as the size of your team and the complexity of operations. The first step is to figure out which stakeholders within your organization are affected by your resource becoming unavailable. Here are some questions that people might have!

The Individual on Leave:
        
  • How is compensation determined for LOA?
  • What is the maximum length of time permissible for LOA?
  • Will an individual’s targets be prorated based on LOA?
The Individual’s Teammates:
        
  • How will work and clients be reassigned when a coworker is on LOA?
  • How are teammates appropriately credited when their coworker is away?
  • Will the whole team’s targets will be prorated based on LOA?
Organizational Leadership:
        
  • Are the company’s LOA policies fair and easy to understand?
  • Do LOA policies follow industry standards and retain great workers?
  • How do we implement LOA seamlessly into our compensation system?

Important Considerations

Here are Some Callouts to Consider When Designing your LOA Policies:

  1. What percentage of compensation do we pay out for the LOAs?

    2. How will your team get compensated for paid leave? Will it be a fixed rate based on their existing compensation package, or will it be a decreasing rate proportional to the amount of time on leave? Are different types of LOAs compensated differently?

  2. How do I credit existing accounts when the agent is unavailable?

    3. How does work get reassigned when someone is out of action? Does a manager take care of it, or does it automatically get delegated to a teammate? Does the rollup credit change to a different manager or territory grouping?

  3. How are merit changes handled during LOA?

    4. How are LOA payments affected if an employee’s merit increases while they are on leave? Are the payments proportionate to the number of days they are on leave for each merit amount? Or, is it all calculated as if target incentives never increased?
It’s not hard to see that having people on LOAs can become complicated quickly!

Automating LOAs

With so many stakeholders and potential scenarios to consider, it is smart to automate your LOA processes to ensure minimum errors. From making sure your team is paid on time, to creating reports that accurately reflect utilization, the possibilities are endless when it comes to saving you time and stress in your day-to-day operations.

Does managing leaves make you want to take time off yourself? Let us help! Contact us today to review how your LOA policies are implemented in your sales comp solution.