Manage Intermittent Family and Medical Leave
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) lets employees take leave as necessary based on their "serious medical condition" or their family member's condition. The leave can be taken as a block or as "intermittent" FMLA leave. This can create disruptions to operations because of the missing employee. here are a few suggestions on how to mitigate the negative impact of intermittent FMLA leave.
Steps
- Temporarily transfer an employee to another position with equivalent pay and benefits during their intermittent FMLA leave.
- You got to keep the benefits the same. You got to keep the pay the same. You have to return the person to the prior job once the intermittent absences are concluded.
- Require employees to follow the normal absentee call out procedure
- There are a lot of you that have policies that say that employees who are going to be out for work must call-in to the office to report their absence. This applies to intermittent FMLA leave.
- When the employee calls out, make sure they say the absence if for FMLA leave
- Get re-certification of the intermittent FMLA leave every 30 days.
- You can get a re-certification of the "chronic condition" no more often than every 30 days and only in connection with a change in the request or condition.
Tips
- Re-certification of intermittent FMLA is tricky.
- Look to see whether the certification specified any kind of minimum duration of two months or three months that this might go on. You need to make sure you're only asking for the re-certification in connection with an absence or change in condition after this time period.
Warnings
- Be very careful with asking for re-certification of intermittent FMLA leave
- Once intermittent FMLA leave is over, the employee must be returned to the same position or equal position with the same pay, benefits and responsibility as they had prior to their leave
