Evolving Challenges of Leave Compliance

By Patricia Lauren D. Zuñiga, JD, LLM, Sr. Compliance Consultant, Lincoln Financial Group

Employers are subject to a multitude of annual changes pertaining to absence and statutory disability from legislatures, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), state labor departments, and other regulatory agencies. These compliance mandates are always changing as more states pass and implement paid family and medical leave (PFML) laws, as well as adopt or amend unpaid leave laws.

Employers can protect themselves by creating a leave compliance action plan and knowing how to respond to the complexities of regulatory changes in absence and statutory disability. This article will review the standard sources of leave compliance obligations and how they have been expanded to include new compliance challenges created by special legislative processes and guidance provided outside the regulatory process.

Understanding Leave Compliance

Employers must keep up with all sources of leave compliance obligations, which include places some do not even think of looking. Here are some examples:

Leave Legislation

When leave legislation is introduced, the bill may or may not end up being enacted into law. It can take several years to gather stakeholder support to draft legislation that has a chance of passage. Even if it is enacted, the final bill text may be very different from the bill that was originally introduced as its provisions are still subject to review, negotiation, and agreement by both legislative chambers. Take, for example, the long road to enactment for the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on the national level, which provides insight into the challenges faced by states as they try to pass paid leave legislation. Cognizant of these challenges, Colorado paid leave proponents took an atypical route to get PFML passed in the state. While a final report¹ was submitted by a legislatively created task force with recommendations for paid leave legislation, paid leave coalitions were able to include PFML on the general ballot², which was approved by voters.

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