Employee leave of absence compliance 101 (with checklist)
Ensure employee leave compliance and download our FMLA leave compliance and leave of absence checklist for notices you’re required to send employees when they request leave.
Ensure employee leave compliance and download our FMLA leave compliance and leave of absence checklist for notices you’re required to send employees when they request leave.
Read on for the basics of managing compliant leaves in every state and download our FMLA leave compliance notice checklist for notices you’re required to send employees when they request leave.
Each year, 20 million Americans file for leave with the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and on any given week, 5% of the workforce is taking a leave of absence. With more than 100 leave laws in the U.S., even if you master your employee leave laws in California, you’ll find that adding New York’s means starting from scratch. These intricacies become a drain on your time and open you and your company up to unnecessary risk — which is why we created this guide, and why Cocoon takes on the task of sending eligibility and designation notices.
To break down the complexity of leave compliance, we find it helpful to discuss in terms of the “three layers”: entitlements, commitments, and accommodations. Which are then followed by required compliance communications.
A leave entitlement is a law that provides job protection for a leave of absence. Job protection is a benefit where the employee has a right to keep their job if they miss work for a qualifying reason (like bonding with a child) specified under the law.
There are leave entitlements at the federal, state, and local levels. These laws are typically clear-cut, black-and-white, and include certain employer and employee obligations. For instance, Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) covered employers are required to send their employees compliance notices at different points throughout their leave.
Note that leave entitlements are different from statutory pay entitlements. A leave entitlement protects your job, while statutory pay provides partial to full salary replacement while on leave. Examples of state or local pay entitlements are SF PPLO, CA PFL, and CA SDI. There are some laws that provide both job protection and pay like Washington’s PFML.
There are typically four main components to laws that fall under the umbrella of leave entitlements:
Here’s what it looks like for FMLA, as an example:
FMLA covers your company if one of the following applies:
Employees of covered employers are eligible to take leave under FMLA if they:
Covered employers must grant eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for one or more of the following reasons:
While it’s clear from the above that FMLA includes a lot of specific details for employers to keep top of mind, the same is true for all state and local laws governing employee leave that overlap, add on to each other, and occasionally conflict.
Leave commitments are voluntary leave policies and benefits, like an employer’s parental or medical leave policy and disability insurance.
Like leave entitlements, employers generally impose employee eligibility criteria for leave commitments, and offer a certain amount of time and pay for a leave through their policy. Some components of a typical leave policy are:
Keep in mind that employees covered under entitlements like FMLA or CFRA can legally take leave whether or not you have a policy in place, and regardless of how much time you offer.
Finally, leave accommodations typically come into play when employees seek to take medical leave but are not eligible and/or have exhausted any leave entitlements or commitments. This happens because employers may be legally obligated under the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide job-protected leave as a reasonable accommodation to employees with qualifying disabilities.
When an employee requests leave, there are several notices employers covered by FMLA must send to employees. These include:
This notice must tell an employee whether they are an eligible employee under FMLA. As a reminder, an employee of a covered employer is eligible to take leave under FMLA if they meet all three of the criteria in the “employee eligibility requirements” list in section one above.
The notice must be executed carefully and fulfill the following:
Other notices required include a Notice of Rights and Responsibilities, a Designation Notice, and much more. To see all notices, download our full FMLA leave compliance notice checklist.
Don’t compromise on compliance: Cocoon's leave software codifies ever-changing federal, state, and local leave laws and automatically sends required compliance notices, eliminating human error and legal risk across geographies.
With ever-changing leave laws and variances across state lines, it can be time-intensive to ensure your organization is always compliant.