[Poland] Electronic leave requests – 5 key benefits

The flexibility introduced into the way labour law procedures are carried out – by allowing them to be conducted electronically – makes day-to-day operations easier, particularly for those employers using electronic document workflows within their organisations.  

The electronic workflow of leave requests (as well as other selected types of absence) allows the process of absence management in an organisation to be measurably improved. The benefits of its use are experienced not only by employers, but also by their employees. 

Online leave requests help to standardise and speed up the leave application process. The automated workflow significantly reduces the time taken to approve leave, whilst ensuring effective control over the entire process. Both the employee and their line manager have constant access to data on the number of days off taken and those still remaining, whilst managers can also manage their team’s workload more easily.  

At the same time, HR departments no longer need to collect and store paper copies of approved absence requests, enter them manually into the ERP system, or prepare files based on them for importing absence data into the system.   

What are the key benefits of implementing electronic leave requests?  

Electronic leave requests are just one of the functionalities of our proprietary Asistar platform. Below we outline the 5 key advantages of this solution for employers.  

Filling in an online leave application does not require it to be printed out and submitted in paper form to your line manager. Your line manager does not need to forward the application to the HR department; everything is handled automatically. Once an employee has submitted the form electronically, it is automatically sent to the manager for approval via an email notification. The manager or managers may approve or reject the request in one of two ways:  

• directly by e-mail (quick option)  

• via the portal – once you have logged in to the Asistar platform, the absence is approved (or rejected), and any approved holiday absence is automatically transferred to the ERP system (via the interface). 

All generated leave requests are visible in the Asistar system, along with their creation date and current status, for both the employee and their manager. Both parties involved in the process also have up-to-date and direct access to information on the current status of leave taken, the status of the request, and the dates on which leave is to be taken.  There are no so-called ‘missing’ leave requests (as sometimes happened with paper-based requests).  

Asistar displays the number of days’ leave to which a given employee is entitled, as determined in accordance with the provisions of the Labour Code or specific provisions of the employment contract. At the same time, when a holiday request is submitted for a specific period, the system checks the data against the employee’s work schedule in the ERP system and deducts the correct number of days (hours) of holiday corresponding to the holiday dates entered in the request. 

Employees have constant access to information about their current holiday entitlement and no longer need to bother the HR department about this. Submitting an electronic holiday request takes just a moment, and automatic notification of its approval (or rejection) is sent to the employee via an automated email reply from the Asistar system, immediately after the manager has processed the request. Approving leave requests is just as quick and simple for managers – particularly when using the option to approve or reject a request directly from their email. 

All holiday requests are stored in the Asistar system (and are also recorded as holiday absences in the ERP system), thereby eliminating the possibility of them being lost or destroyed. Only authorised personnel have access to the data. 

Electronic employee documents – what has changed in the Labour Code since 2026? 

From 27 January 2026, further amendments to the Labour Code will come into force concerning the form in which employees’ applications and declarations specified in the regulations must be submitted. The amendment has abolished the requirement for a written form for a number of labour law procedures, replacing it with either a paper or electronic format. We discuss these changes and their practical implications for employers in more detail in the article: Deregulation of HR and payroll regulations 

If employers are already using electronic document workflows, it is also worth considering maintaining personnel files in electronic form (so-called ‘e-files’), as this allows for the automation of further HR processes (avoiding the need to print documents and significantly simplifying the circulation of employee documentation). 

Find out how outsourcing HR and payroll supports companies in managing employee records and ensuring compliance with labour law: