Time Off

Everyone knows this experience from the employee side. You want a week off in July. Straightforward enough. But first you have to figure out how to request it. Is it the HR system? Which one? Is there a form? Do you email your manager directly? Does your manager then notify someone else? And how many days do you have left — is that figure counting the days you took in March?

You ask a colleague. They give you a slightly different answer. You send an email and hope for the best.

The rules are complicated. They shouldn't have to be your problem.

Time off is not simply "days away from work." It is a set of rules that vary by employment contract, by country, by region, by religion, by length of service, and by what was agreed when the person joined. Some employees accrue leave over time. Some have entitlements that carry over to the following year up to a limit. Some earn additional days after hitting a milestone with the company. Some have public holidays that don't apply to colleagues in other countries or with different religious observances.

All of this is written into contracts, required by law, and tracked — usually inconsistently — in a spreadsheet that one person owns and nobody else fully understands.

Workplace holds all of it. Every rule, every entitlement, every public holiday calendar for every country your team is in. When an employee requests time off, Workplace already knows what they're entitled to, what they've taken, what they have remaining, and whether the request fits the rules of their specific contract. No manual checking. No "let me look into that and get back to you."

Just send an email

Most HR systems require employees to log in, navigate to the right section, fill in a form, click submit, and wait. For someone who uses the system regularly, that's a minor inconvenience. For someone who only requests leave a few times a year — which is most employees — it's a genuine barrier. Forgotten passwords. Changed interfaces. A process that feels heavier than the thing being requested.

Workplace accepts time off requests by email. An employee writes what they need. Workplace reads it, checks the rules, and routes the approval. If something doesn't add up — the dates conflict with a blackout period, the entitlement doesn't cover the request, the submission doesn't match the contract terms — Workplace comes back with a clear explanation. Not a rejection with a code. A description of what the issue is and what the employee can do about it.

There are no emotions involved with a computer. For a lot of employees, that alone makes it easier to deal with holiday questions through Workplace than by asking a manager.

For managers and business owners

The other side of time off is knowing, in advance, what's coming. Who is off this week. Who has already booked next month. Whether two people from the same team are both planning to be away in August and nobody has flagged it. Whether a critical role will be uncovered during a period you care about.

Workplace shows you this before it becomes a problem. National holidays that apply to some employees and not others are accounted for. Time off from previous years that carries over is calculated correctly. Accruals, milestones, contract-specific entitlements — all of it tracked and applied without someone having to maintain it by hand.