FMLA Articles
Key to remember: While employee training isn’t mandated by the FMLA, who wouldn’t want to take some steps to make FMLA leave administration easier in the long run?
Applies to: All public employers and private employers with 50 or more employees.
Impact to customers: Training employees on the FMLA, including their responsibilities and potential repercussions for not meeting their responsibilities may result in easier FMLA leave administration.
Outside of the FMLA poster, many employers would rather not give employees more information about their rights under the FMLA. But what if employers provided training that focused on employee responsibilities? The information in the training could also include your related company policies as well as the FMLA limitations. How might such training affect your FMLA administration world?
It might just make it easier.
A few benefits employee FMLA training could produce include the following:
Such training could include the sequence of events that must happen. This might inform employees that, to put you on notice of the need for leave, they must provide certain information, such as the timing and duration of the leave and the basic reason (e.g., the employee is unable to work, to care for a family member, bonding, military family). From there, the employee will receive certain information (from the eligibility/rights & responsibilities notice) and might be expected to provide a certification.
This might be a nice opportunity to inform employees of the risks of not providing a requested certification, including that without the certification, the FMLA’s job protections might not apply to the absence.
The options on what you want employees to know about the FMLA are generally up to you. Instead of looking at it strictly from an employee rights perspective, the training would be from an employee responsibilities perspective. Employees then should be better informed on what is expected of them.
If a one-hour training session could save you 1.5 hours per month, that would equate to 18 hours per year. Might be worth a try.
The J. J. Keller LEAVE MANAGER service is your business resource for tracking employee leave and ensuring compliance with the latest Federal and State FMLA and leave requirements.