How PTO Approvals Contribute to Decision Fatigue for Managers and HR

Every decision we make takes a toll on us physically, mentally and emotionally. That’s the power of decision fatigue, which worsens the more choices we make, weakening our executive function and potentially impairing our judgment.

It’s annoying at home, sure, but it can outright derail us at work. And in areas that seem to depend on choice, like time-off management, decision fatigue feels inevitable. Let’s explore how the phenomenon affects time off, as well as how automated technology with built-in decision logic helps overcome it.

The everyday decision trap

When every choice consumes time, even seemingly small decisions drain our productivity. Granted, our agency depends on our ability to make choices, but does that mean every decision we face is one worth making? To help understand how menial choices contribute to decision fatigue in HR, we’ll turn to something nearly every organization manages: a time-off approval process.

The micromoment that drains productivity

While not every employer offers PTO, most provide some form of time off. So imagine you work in HR for a company that prides itself on a generous PTO policy. With the holidays approaching, the first few requests — which will snowball into hundreds — hit your inbox. Not too bad, right? Maybe not, but keep in mind that any one of those time-off requests could require you to:

• check the requested hours against the employee’s time-off balances
• ensure a manager provided approval (and follow up with them if they didn’t)
• verify that the denied or approved requests comply with local, state and federal laws
• communicate the time-off decision with the affected employee
• mediate a dispute about time off between the employee and their supervisor
• manage bias, priority, timeliness, company policies, blackout periods and more

Every step along the way involves choice. Do you remind an employee of their low time-off balance? How many requests can you authorize per team and department to ensure schedule coverage? How will you fix an error with an approved time-off request? These are just a few of the decisions you could make with a single time-off request.

Depending on your business size, company policies, operational needs and compliance requirements, you may face more. A lot more. Inevitably, those choices amplify the decision fatigue not only for HR leaders and professionals, but managers, too.

What decision fatigue looks like in PTO management

Understanding the choices that just one time-off request could bring helps us see how decision fatigue can run rampant in your organization. With outdated, manual time-off approvals, the issue only gets worse. Keep in mind “manual” isn’t just limited to approvals that take place on paper, either. Manual processes can emerge with digital tech, too, as emails, calendar events and even push notifications may still require choice when they’re not automated. Here’s how.

What is decision fatigue in HR?

Decision fatigue is the resulting mental exhaustion from making a high volume of small, repetitive and manual choices. The Decision Lab describes this state of mind as one that limits cognitive function and gradually slows our ability to make a choice, or even make one at all. For HR and managers alike, these decisions that erode focus could relate to:

• reviewing time-off balances
• verifying coverage
• ensuring compliance
• enforcing policy consistency

Without a way to reduce the number of microdecisions HR and managers must make, every workforce process could fuel decision fatigue.

Why PTO approvals are deceptively complex

Possibly more so than any other process, manual time-off approvals introduce extra choice and complexity by requiring managers to weigh fairness, coverage, deadlines and regulations. Beyond that, HR is often saddled with manually verifying time-off balances and tracking accruals, as its tech is likely made up of multiple separate systems that don’t seamlessly communicate with each other.

Even today, disparate HR tools that don’t exist within a truly single database are more common than you may think. A study conducted by Forrester Consulting, for example, found that organizations deploy an average of 6.17 HCM providers,* each requiring a different system with its own database. That arrangement then leaves HR to manually reconcile employee data and meticulously determine its accuracy.

Meanwhile, the process leaves employees in the dark as the time-off decision fatigue impacts HR employees and their managers. These delayed responses quickly compound as employees grow more frustrated over:

• changed or cancelled plans
• lost faith and rapport in their leaders
• a lack of transparency and timeliness with decisions

In this way, manual time-off approvals pin HR and managers between increasingly overwhelming choices and the damaged investment of their employees.

Quantifying the mental load

We’ve seen the potential a time-off approval workflow has for generating decision fatigue. Now, let’s explore how it specifically drains your organization of its finite resources.

How small tasks add up

While the exact time required to manually process a single time-off request varies across organizations, we can rely on research to estimate the approximate cost of basic HR tasks. For example, EY found that it costs employers an estimated of $11.75 for HR or managers to conduct a single, manual search for employee information. Beyond just searching for data, EY found it costs an estimated:

• $10.92 for an employee to submit a time-off request
• $12.15 to review or approve a time-off request
• $15.06 to review or approve shift swaps between employees
• $19.98 to calculate time-off balances and update the employee

Given 20 or more submissions at a midsized to large business, a manager could spend hours a month managing them. And that doesn’t even consider how the cost of each individual decision scales across multiple teams, departments and locations when an organization doesn’t automate its time-off process.

When repetition becomes risk

As decision fatigue infects managers and HR, it quickly leads to slower responses, missed deadlines and an inconsistent application of policy. Maybe unconscious bias begins to influence approvals, benefiting only certain employees. Or perhaps the expectation for a time-off decision to be made within a few days, as specified in an employee handbook, falls short.

Whatever issue arises, the consequences can range from frustrated employees to potential compliance penalties and more. Yet for some organizations, slow and inconsistent time-off approvals are the norm. According to an October 2023 survey conducted by Pollfish and commissioned by Paycom, 15% of U.S.-based, full-time employees said it can take over a week for their managers to approve time-off requests.

In other words, the longer time-off decisions take, the more they take away from an organization’s bottom line and its employees’ engagement.

The organizational impact of PTO decision fatigue

The business impact of decision fatigue resulting from a manual time-off process can’t be stressed enough. Unchecked, it can damage an organization at every level. Here’s how.

The human cost

Let’s consider how manual time-off reviews impact the employee experience. First, we know that some employees may have to wait over a week for a response to their requests. This could contribute to the results of a separate Pollfish survey commissioned by Paycom in November 2024, where 17% of U.S.-based, full-time employees cited poor management as the reason they changed employers in the last 12 months.

It might seem like a leap to go from a late decision on time off to turnover, but not when that mistake repeats itself enough to become a detrimental part of company culture. Because if a process — such as a manual time-off approval process — is broken, then it’s easier to see how the issue escalates. Think about it this way:

1. A manager suffers from decision fatigue over a wave of time-off requests.
2. That manager lags in approving their team’s requests due to mental strain.
3. The requests they do approve seem to be heavily in favor of the employees they interact with most.
4. Employees see the perceived inequity as their trust and engagement suffer.

The business cost

As we dig deeper, we can uncover how decision fatigue in a problematic manual time-off process impacts the business as a whole.

For example, inconsistent time-off policies can pose a compliance risk, especially in states that mandate predictive scheduling or other rules around time off and leave. With enough mistakes, an organization could find itself facing fines, audits and other penalties for noncompliance.

Even in the absence of a direct legal consequence, higher labor cost reveals a potentially deeper, systemic problem. If HR or a manager approves too few time-off requests, employees may become jaded and disengaged, harming productivity. Similarly, too many overlapping time-off approvals could put significant pressure on the overworked and understaffed teams that pick up the slack.

Without consistent and timely approvals, even a robust time-off policy that should benefit your workforce can actually work against it, making what should be positive costly for your organization. So how can employers strike the ideal balance without risking more decision fatigue among HR and management?

From fatigue to flow: Automating and streamlining PTO approvals

The key to reducing decision fatigue in time-off management is simple: Don’t require HR or managers to decide on requests at all. Seriously, how can they suffer decision fatigue if they don’t have to make choice after choice for every submission they receive?

It’s not that the choice won’t be made whatsoever. Instead, the choice is automatically made for them based on scheduling needs, company policies and compliance requirements. Let’s explore how.

How automation restores clarity and consistency

With HR software capable of automating time-off decisions, you can apply rules uniformly and pull guesswork — and decision fatigue — off of HR’s and managers’ plates. Remember how a manual process produces more work and frustration for virtually everyone involved? Here’s what it will look like if you automate it with HR tech that uses a truly single database:

1. An employee uses self-service time-off management through their convenient, fully mobile HR and payroll app to submit a request.
2. The tech automates a decision based on rules and parameters HR sets.
3. The employee is notified immediately, not days or weeks after they submitted their request.
4. Approved submissions flow seamlessly into payroll, scheduling, the employee’s timecard, accruals and even a manager’s time-off calendar.

At no point in that automated time-off approval process does HR or a manager need to manually verify a submission. That said, a disputed or denied request may still require a leader to discuss the decision with employees. And if it is determined that the request can be approved as an exception, your organization’s HR professionals still have the control to override an automated decision.

Benefits beyond HR processes

While automated time-off decisions help eliminate unnecessary busywork, they offer a substantial benefit for an entire organization, too:

• Managers regain time to focus on mentoring, strategy and organizational goals.
• HR professionals avoid labor-intensive tasks and can turn their sights on enhancing the employee experience and moving into more technical and strategic roles.
• Employees see transparency and a faster turnaround, ultimately boosting their trust, engagement and satisfaction.
• Executives enjoy higher HR efficiency, stronger compliance and employees who know their C-suite prioritizes their experience.

Turning PTO approvals into a strategic advantage

Time off and PTO should support employees, and by extension, the long-term success of your organization. Automated time-off decision-making helps ensure it stays that way.

What leaders need to know about decision fatigue in PTO approvals

Remember, decision fatigue isn’t a human issue, but an operational one. Every move employers make, like with time-off management, can create friction and inefficiency when done manually. On the other hand, every decision we automate empowers us to reduce HR workload and focus on work that contributes to our organizations’ short- and long-term goals. And greater productivity, compliance and employee morale follow.

What software should my organization use to automate PTO decision-making?

Looking to ace decision fatigue management and time-off automation in your workplace? Paycom’s Time-Off Requests tool featuring GONE® simplifies your time-off process by automating decisions based on guidelines you set — all within our truly single-database software. GONE allows you to set a variety of time-off decision-making criteria to ensure timely resolutions that abide by company policies and meet departmental needs. No more constantly mediating time-off disputes, chasing down manager approvals or keeping employees waiting in the dark. Once GONE is set up, Paycom automates the rest.

A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Paycom reveals how our Time-Off Requests tool featuring GONE generated a projected ROI of up to 821% annually by:

• saving HR, finance and admins nearly 200 hours
• avoiding up to 240 overtime hours from consistent staffing
• saving every manager nearly a workweek annually (refers to up to 30 hours out of a traditional 40-hour workweek)**

See how our truly single software’s time-off automation simplifies life for everyone in your organization.

Decision fatigue in PTO approvals: FAQ

How do PTO approvals cause decision fatigue?

Every time-off request could require decisions around:

• accruals
• time-off disputes
• company policies
• scheduling coverage
• compliance requirements
• and much more

These constant choices can compound decision fatigue that impairs HR’s or a manager’s judgment, resulting in slower or missed decisions that negatively impact employees.

How does PTO automation help HR and managers?

Time-off automation benefits HR and managers by automatically making the time-off choices that lead to decision fatigue. By extension, the tech frees HR and managers to focus on employees, development, strategy and other organizational priorities.

What are the benefits of self-service PTO software?

With self-service software that operates in a truly single database, employees can easily submit time-off requests from a convenient mobile app. After receiving an immediate response, the software’s automated time-off tool automatically communicates approved decisions to payroll, timecards, accruals, scheduling and the applicable manager’s time-off calendar.

*Single-Database HCM Solutions Drive Cross-Business Success, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Paycom, May 2025.

**A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Paycom (October 2024). Results are for a composite organization based on interviewed clients with a three-year projected ROI of 102%-821% and include annual savings of up to 192 hours for HR, finance and admin teams.