Top leave management pain points in 2026

Today, organisations across industries are navigating an increasingly complex workforce landscape. Employee expectations for flexibility and wellbeing are rising, while economic conditions and regulatory demands continue to evolve. Nowhere are these pressures more visible than in leave management — a critical yet often overlooked element of Workforce Management (WFM).

Recent research from Mercer and Gartner highlights that managing absenteeism, flexibility, and compliance has become a leading challenge for HR leaders globally. For shift-based and deskless industries such as Hospitality, Retail, Aged Care and Healthcare, the stakes are even higher. Unplanned absences can have a ripple effect on compliance, service delivery, and of course, team morale.

Beyond operational risks, high annual leave balances also carry financial implications for organisations. Large accruals sit on the balance sheet as liabilities, and when left unmanaged, they can create unexpected cost spikes — particularly when employees exit the business and must be paid out at their current salary rate. Keeping leave balances within reasonable levels helps smooth labour costs, improve cash-flow predictability, and reduce the long-term financial burden of growing leave liabilities. Encouraging employees to take leave regularly also supports wellbeing and reduces burnout, helping businesses avoid both financial and human-centred risks.

Below, we explore the top leave management pain points for 2026 and how Humanforce’s intelligent WFM solutions help organisations stay ahead.

1. The complexity of managing diverse leave types

From paid parental leave and annual leave to emerging categories like wellbeing or volunteering days, organisations are dealing with an expanding variety of leave types. Keeping up with evolving legislation — particularly around mental health leave and flexible work entitlements — can be a full-time job in itself.

The Solution: Humanforce Leave Management

Humanforce automates the entire leave management lifecycle — from request to approval — ensuring compliance across all leave categories and reducing the administrative burden on frontline managers and HR teams.

Managers gain a clear view of leave balances and accruals in real time, enabling smarter workforce planning and coverage management. Employees, meanwhile, can check and request leave directly through the Humanforce Work App, empowering them to plan time off with ease.

2. Rising unplanned absenteeism and burnout

The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report notes that stress and burnout levels remain high across all industries. This trend has directly contributed to increased absenteeism, which can cost employers up to 8% of total payroll annually.

Without effective visibility and forecasting tools, managers are often left scrambling to fill last-minute gaps — leading to overtime costs, worker fatigue, and lower productivity.

The Solution: Humanforce Workforce Analytics

Workforce Analytics allows HR leaders to identify absence trends before they escalate. By tracking leave usage, planned and unplanned absenteeism rates, and burnout indicators in real time, leaders can make data-driven decisions to improve workforce wellbeing.
Integration with Rostering & Scheduling also enables proactive planning, ensuring coverage for critical shifts while maintaining compliance with fatigue management rules.

3. Manual and error-prone leave processes

Many organisations still rely on outdated spreadsheets or legacy HR systems to manage leave. The result? Lost requests, miscalculated accruals, and errors that can lead to employee frustration or even compliance breaches. Manual leave processes also make it harder to forecast staffing levels, particularly across large, multi-site organisations.

The Solution: Humanforce Time & Attendance

When integrated with Leave Management, Time & Attendance ensures leave is calculated accurately based on hours worked, entitlements, and employment type. Automated timesheet validation eliminates human error, while intelligent clocking options (including on-site kiosks, QR, facial recognition, or mobile geo-fencing) ensure all leave data flows directly into payroll.

4. Compliance and award interpretation challenges

In Australia, compliance with Modern Awards, enterprise agreements, and the Fair Work Act is non-negotiable. However, interpreting leave provisions and accrual calculations under these frameworks is becoming increasingly complex. A single misstep can expose employers to financial penalties and reputational damage.

The Solution: Humanforce Awards & Compliance

The sophisticated award interpretation engine ensures all leave entitlements and accruals are compliant with the latest legal frameworks. Automated updates and real-time validation mean HR teams no longer need to manually check every rule change — protecting both your business and your people.

5. Lack of transparency and employee frustration

Employees increasingly expect real-time visibility into their leave entitlements and balances, reflecting a broader demand for transparency and self-service access to employment information. Without self-service capability or fast data access, employees may feel frustrated having to jump through hoops to request time off or view a specific pay check.

The Solution: Humanforce Work App

The Humanforce Work App puts leave transparency directly in the hands of employees. With self-service access, team members can view accrued balances, submit requests, and receive approvals instantly. For managers, automated alerts and calendar syncing make coordination across teams simple and efficient.

6. Data silos and poor integration with payroll or rostering

Disparate systems often lead to duplicated effort, delayed approvals, and inaccurate reporting. In 2026, integrated ecosystems are no longer optional — they’re essential, especially for frontline businesses with large, dispersed workforces.

The Solution: Humanforce’s unified WFM suite

With native integration across Rostering & Scheduling, Time & Attendance, Payroll, and more, Humanforce removes data silos entirely. This ensures that leave, hours worked, and pay are synchronised — providing HR, Finance, and Operations with a single source of truth.

The future of leave management: From admin to strategy

As the workplace continues to evolve, leave management is shifting from a transactional task to a strategic lever for engagement and wellbeing. Intelligent automation, compliance confidence, and employee empowerment will define the next generation of workforce management.

Humanforce’s employee-centred platform brings all these elements together, creating a better experience for both frontline employees and managers, while helping organisations build resilience in an unpredictable future.

About Humanforce

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses.

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.