When an employee puts in a sick leave request, it can raise all kinds of questions about employee rights, covered medical reasons, and qualifying exigencies. Luckily, state laws in place like the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protect both the employee and employer. This law provides peace of mind and can help protect the health and welfare of FMLA-qualifying employees by providing 12 weeks of unpaid leave entitlement each calendar year.
It's incredibly comforting to eligible employees when they can count on job security during a serious health condition or when called to care for a family member in need.
Below we'll provide an FMLA eligibility checklist, including what's covered, the essential details around an employee's eligibility, and a few pro tips to make the process easier for everyone involved.
FMLA is an unpaid leave of up to 12 workweeks that guarantees the employee job security and uninterrupted health insurance and medical benefits. The requirement for an FMLA leave applies to any period of incapacity longer than three consecutive business days.
As stated on the Department of Labor website, an employee can take FMLA leave for any of the following reasons:
FMLA also covers military caregiver leave, which is when an employee must care for a covered service member who has suffered serious injury or illness, and it includes 26 work weeks in a 12-month period.
Before filing, employees must meet the requirements of this FMLA eligibility checklist:
Here’s more information on each of those requirements.
What if an employee took a long break while working for their employer, then came back? To be eligible for FMLA, an employee's 12 months of employment can include breaks of up to seven years. Any gaps that exceed seven years will hamper the employee's eligibility unless it's due to military obligations or a previously written agreement.
When qualifying for FMLA eligibility, "hours of service" means that the employee has actively performed duties and tasks. It eliminates paid time off, sick days, and most other scenarios where the employee was not actively engaged in work. The 1,250 hours must be completed by the time the leave starts.
The 12 months (here and for rule #1) is calculated in one of four ways:
This may not apply depending on the type of employer:
Once you receive a completed notice of eligibility from an employee, as the covered employer, it's your responsibility to communicate the following with the employee on your leave policy:
The DOL.gov website has the most recently updated certification forms to support processing a Family Medical Leave Act request, including certification of health care provider for a serious health condition and certification of military family leave.
Here are just a few tips to support both the employee and employer at the early stages of an FMLA request:
Pulpstream makes processing an employee’s leave a streamlined and stress-free process.
With logic-driven workflows and intelligent notifications, it captures all the required information. This backup ensures that no crucial steps get missed, ending delays and providing employees with peace of mind.
Use automated communication support to comfort anxious employees and further invest in tools to help during difficult times due to a personal health condition or that of a loved one.
Perhaps the biggest perk of Pulpstream is its ability to provide easy communication access to employees while they're away. Whether through SMS or email, employees can upload required medical documents from any device.
The human resources team will love the customizable dashboards that they can create to access a secure and intuitive self-service portal. This feature ensures that communications are captured and stored in each employee's record, centralizing critical information and saving time.
Since it's a no-code platform, it's also budget-friendly and easy to use with a user-centric design that doesn't require extraneous training.
Get a feel for Pulpstream with a free demo. Our trained team of experts can answer any questions you have about implementing an automated solution to manage leave of absence requests and much more!