FMLA Rookie!
NHHR
17 Posts
We are a small institution (120 employees) and thankfully we have avoided using FMLA thus far...however, one of our employee's needs to tend to her daughter (who is having spinal surgery this winter). The employee has asked if she is required to utilize her sick, vacation, personal time (any paid time off) prior to the FMLA kicking in?
Does anyone know of any laws out there regarding this? Our company policy doesn't state either way.
Thanks!
Does anyone know of any laws out there regarding this? Our company policy doesn't state either way.
Thanks!
Comments
Question: "The employee has asked if she is required to utilize her sick, vacation, personal time (any paid time off) prior to the FMLA kicking in?"
The regulations allow for the required use of accrued paid leaves as part (best not to think about it in the "prior-to" sense) of an employee's FMLA qualifying absence.
The regulations also allow for the non-required use of accrued paid leaves as part of FMLA qualifying absence.
"Our company policy doesn't state either way."
It is one of the areas in the regulations were the employER is given some discretion – with the understanding that your policy be communicated to your employees and consistently applied in all situations.
The employer, in anticipation of and as part of its FMLA compliance efforts, should determine (ideally ahead of time) its polices concerning the implementation of the regulations. Now is the time (years ago would have been better) for the employer to decide how they want these types of situations to be handled (now and in the future) and make that decision a part of its policy manual.
Our reasoning is really quite straight forward. It seems burdensome to have an EE out for 12 weeks of FML, then have them come back and start using vacation time, well time, additional sick time etc. In our situation, if an EE combined the 12 weeks of FML with an additional 5 weeks of other paid time of, we are going without the services of the EE for too long a time frame. Continueing to use temps or splitting up the work load amongst other employees gets to be a problem. We try to minimize it by requiring the leave banks to run concurrent with FML.
For example, I went on FMLA last year, I had 8 weeks of paid leave saved...but because I was still in a paid status, I continued to accrue leave time.
Under our policy, I could not apply the leave earned between the 8 weeks of FMLA to extend my paid portion of FMLA any further.
I still could take the remaining 4 weeks, but it would be unpaid.
I would encourage you to develop written policies to ensure that all EE's are treated fairly. It will save you many headaches in the future.
*edit* the other bonus to this practice is that generally, you have an ee returning from leave with a bit of a cushion....which is important after a major illness, having a baby, or caring for a family member. anything can happen.
The reason I ask is one of my friends works for an organization that had different rules for FMLA leave than other leave and was told by the DOL that the practice violated the FMLA by penalizing the employee for taking FMLA. This has resulted in going back two years to fix leave balances or track former employees to pay them minute sums. A pain.