There is a good chance that your employees (or colleagues) sometimes will not show up at work. It might have to do with the fact that they enjoy a well-deserved vacation. And there is a good chance that they'll show up after vacation with loaded batteries, ready to pick up what they've left for the vacation period. It's something from all times However, you - as a manager - need to be informed about who will be in next week, or if the full staff will be available when you plan the launch of your year-end campaign...
The neccessity for proper employee vacation approval and registration is obvious. The implementation of a vacation request process in many companies however, is rarely effective, rarely efficient at least. Error-prone and vulnerable for loss-of-paper or files. Or labor-intensive and therefore expensive.
The vacation request process is a typical process which can be supported by Workflow fairly simple. EZ-Workflow supports the definition of your Vacation Request Form, or you simply use the standard Vacation Request Form, available in EZ-Workflow repository. Define the routing activities and the corresponding roles and there you go.... Employees can pull status information for their request themselves. They don't need to bother their managers to find out.
Making your internal processes more efficient with workflow not only is wise because it pays back short-term. It also strength the positive feeling of employees, that they're working for a company that doesn't make life difficult with inefficient, untransparant and error-prone processes.