HR Management & Compliance

7 Best Practices in FMLA Intermittent Leave Administration

While small increments of leave time under the Family and Medical Leave Act may cause administrative headaches, there are various tips and strategies on how to contend with time tracking issues and employee abuse of intermittent FMLA leave.

The following discussion gives an of overview the steps you should take after you have received an employee’s request for intermittent FMLA leave, including pitfalls to avoid.

Intermittent Leave Compliance Checklist

As your company’s guardian of FMLA leave allowance, your job is to understand FMLA compliance. One approach is to consider the federal leave law in terms of checkboxes, flowcharts, legal hurdles and tasks.  In essence, you’re the program’s driver. So when you’re presented with such and such obstacle or detour, you may need to apply an alternate tact or action to stay on the road to compliance.

The first task in an intermittent leave situation is to:

1)      Request and assess medical certification from your employee to determine whether his or her own serious health condition or that of an immediate family member qualifies him or her for intermittent FMLA-covered absences. Your employee has 15 calendar days to provide the certification or his or her leave may be delayed or denied.

As employer, you should base your initial case evaluation on this requisite medical certification that necessitates your employee’s need for intermittent FMLA leave.

The second task protects you in case the information provided on the certification forms is too vague or ambiguous to make a sound assessment.  

2)      Submit a written request to your employee for complete and sufficient information. Specify the reason the certification was considered incomplete or insufficient, and notify your employee that he or she must provide the additional information within seven days or the leave may be delayed or denied.

The third task is a precaution in case you have reason to doubt that the medical certification is authentic.

3)      Contact the health care provider to ensure that he or she actually prepared the certification and to clarify handwriting or the meaning of a response. If you still doubt the validity of the certification, you may ask for a second opinion. If the first and second opinions differ, you may require the employee to see a third health care provider. Keep in mind that the second and third opinions are at the company’s expense, and the third provider’s opinion is binding.

The fourth through seventh tasks are actions and recommendations that assume your employee has an existing certification for sporadic health-related absences. These involve interdepartmental cooperation and management of all absences related to the condition.

4)      Count all absences related to the condition against the employee’s FMLA entitlement.

5)      Train your front-line supervisors to identify and report all FMLA-covered intermittent absences to HR.

6)      Do not count FMLA leave hours against the employee under a no-fault attendance policy as this practice could cause future legal entanglements.

7)      Enforce an internal FMLA policy (spelled out in the employee handbook) that requires employees to use up paid time off during their FMLA leave. This prevents employees from taking paid leave after their FMLA leave expires.

For the complete article, visit hr.complianceexpert.com

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