FMLA

What is FMLA? | Automated Approach | Conclusion

Ease FMLA Compliance with Attendance Enterprise

Leave management is the process of employees requesting time away from work and supervisors granting or denying leave based on its impact to the organization. Complex, manually administered leave programs are costly to manage, and often result in errors. This paper outlines how Attendance Enterprise automates FMLA and leave management policies to ensure organizations operate efficiently. Employers can fairly and accurately enforce leave policies, and customize routing and approvals based on a company's unique business processes. Most importantly, employers easily access consolidated time off information for analysis, reporting, and financial planning.

What Is the Family Medical Leave Act?

The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. It also requires that their group health benefits be maintained during the leave. FMLA is designed to help employees balance their work and family responsibilities by allowing them to take reasonable unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons. FMLA applies to companies with 50 or more employees, all public agencies, all public and private elementary and secondary schools. These employers must provide an eligible employee with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year for any of the following reasons:

• The birth and care of the newborn child of an employee 
• Placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care 
• Care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition
• To take medical leave when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition 

Employees are eligible for leave if they have worked for their employer at least 12 months, at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months, and work at a location where the company employs 50 or more employees within 75 miles. Whether an employee has worked the minimum 1,250 hours of service is determined according to FLSA principles for determining compensable hours or work. US Dept of Labor

As today’s employee work schedules become more flexible, many employers now offer paid leave plans to employees as a way of combining personal time, vacation, holiday, floating holidays, and other paid leave. Leave policies are often based on seniority, job classification, or mandated by union or Federal employee regulations.

Typically, an eligible employee receives a certain number of days of paid time off, which may be used at his or her discretion. Once the days have been used, any additional time off is taken without pay as stipulated by the organization.

An Administrative Challenge

For many organizations, the success of a flexible paid leave program is dependent on whether the program is efficiently managed and accurately tracked.

When complex leave programs are administered manually, it is costly and cumbersome to monitor eligibility, leave requests, approvals, remaining leave balances, and enforce leave policies fairly and accurately. Manual methods are error-prone, and could result in leave abuses and costs related to absent staff.

With a manual system, supervisors are often unable to respond to leave requests in a timely manner due to complex eligibility and entitlement policies, which could result in unexcused absences.

Many employers fail to recognize how much of their total HR expense pertains to leave-related programs- and how much ability they have to manage these costs.

An Automated Approach

Given the financial resources committed to time off programs and the paper intensive methods that surround those HR policies. Many employers are evaluating the efficiency of their leave management processes.

The leave management capabilities provided by Attendance Enterprise allow administrators to automatically track and manage a range of employee leave policies in real time. This process streamlines the various leave management tasks performed by supervisors, employees and administrators- including making requests, granting approvals, evaluating eligibility, scheduling, and reporting leave compensation. Invaluable summary data gives easy access to trends and employee leave patterns that can point to and help reduce the abuse of leave benefits.

Attendance Enterprise helps to administer and track paid and unpaid leave policies, applying complex rules fairly and consistently.

Attendance Enterprise & FMLA

Not all employees work enough hours or have been employed for long enough to take advantage of FMLA leave. Summaries and reports in Attendance Enterprise clarify and document who is and who is not eligible, according to Federal and State laws, and company policy. Attendance Enterprise reports can show whether employees qualify for FMLA leave regardless of the 12-month qualifying period your organization uses. An FMLA bank makes it easy to see when employees qualify for FMLA leave. As hours are used, they are subtracted from the FMLA bank.

Attendance Enterprise tracks all eligibility, leave hours, and employee data. Because the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division investigates complaints employees make, it is critical to keep accurate records. Employees who feel they have been denied FMLA leave unfairly can file civil litigation for associated costs (lost wages, child care) plus interest. Attendance Enterprise reduces the risk to your organization by storing accurate, to-the-minute records of an employee’s eligibility for, and use of, FMLA.