March 2019

Employment Practices Compliance

Managing ever-expanding state and local paid family and sick leave mandates, training supervisors and managers on FMLA and ADA requirements, handling difficult accommodation requests, and many other compliance challenges create hurdles for leave professionals on a daily basis. This issue of @Work features best practices for staying on top of compliance requirements for all of your programs.

Features

State-by-State Paid Family & Medical Leave Legislation

Paid family and medical leave is being legislated at all levels of government. Breaking down laws to understand the program characteristics and taking time to learn about how they interact with other leaves and paid benefits will set your organization up for success. Read more.

Paid Sick and Safe Leave

While sick and safe leave laws are good news for employees and their families, the provisional and administrative requirements present a myriad of challenges for employers. Because these laws are made at the local or state level, they can present multi-state employers with hurdles to achieve full compliance. Read more.

Spotlight Articles

Program Showcase: Navigating Paid Family Leave

Responding to a tight U.S. labor market and changing workforce demographics, more employers are offering paid, job-protected leave for new parents or to care for ill family members. But now employers must administer and coordinate private plans parallel to those being enacted at the state or local level. Read more.

Compliance Showcase: Supervisor Training Business Case

Finding the time and budget to train supervisors is a huge challenge for human resources departments. Upper management often doesn’t get it. And yet the cost of a single employee lawsuit dwarfs the cost of a comprehensive training program — including both hard dollars and personnel time. Read more.

SAW/RTW Showcase: Support for Victims of Violence

Victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking lose tens of thousands of work hours and jobs annually. Employers that utilize a response plan to support employees are able to address dangerous situations quickly and stay in compliance with the myriad of state and local laws protecting victim rights. Read more.

Columns

Absence Matters: Leave & Disability Resources

While volumes of information are available to assist employers in navigating leave and disability complexities, employers are often left searching for the best methods to obtain, organize, and implement practices to ensure compliance. Here are nine excellent resources related to employment practices compliance. Read more.

Integrated Absence Management: Supervisors Are Key

When a worker first comes to their supervisor with a health condition affecting their ability to work, they expect genuine concern, support, and problem-solving assistance. Studies have shown that positive workplace responses are key to successful RTW. Read more.

Engaging Today's Workforce: Coordinating Paid FML

All employers are challenged to comply with new state paid family and medical leave laws. In addition to common insurance plan variables, employers should focus on three key elements when responding to continuing changes. Read more.

Employer Solutions: Returning to Work on Modified Duty

How far should an employer bend to help employees return to work after a leave? The short answer is: as far you can without harming the business. Your organization invests time, effort, and money training employees, anticipating this will be repaid in productivity and retention. Read more.

FMLA Second and Third Opinions: Certification Validity

While many terms are defined within the FMLA, “reasonable basis to doubt the validity” is not one of them. Since it’s virtually impossible to imagine all the possible reasons to doubt, employers must settle for being alert to anything that brings pause. Read more.

The Disabled Workforce: The Friday-Monday Leave Act

While the FMLA was created “to balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families”, it can foster misuse by employees who struggle to maintain regular attendance. Today, employers find themselves challenged to combat leave misuse that often happens concurrently with the ADA interactive process. Read more.

Absence Minded: Workplace Harassment

With the snowballing of the #MeToo movement, now more than ever, individuals are speaking up about the right to have a workplace that is free of all forms of harassment. Employers are obligated to protect employees from being harassed based on personal factors such as gender, religion, or ethnicity. Read more.

Technology and Absence Management: Consistency

A consistent and timely approach is crucial for complying with the FMLA, the ADA, and countless pieces of state and local leave legislation. To prevent inconsistency and reduce compliance risks, many employers turn to technology to standardize their processes. Read more.

Disability in the Workplace: The ADA

Employers risk litigation under the ADA if they do not train managers and human resources about their ADA accommodation obligations, establish processes that facilitate the good-faith interactive process, and ensure that accommodation decisions are legally compliant. Read more.

Mental Health At Work: Accommodations and Leaves

Employers are not obligated to offer accommodations or leave when the need is not known. However, overlooking negative changes in employee performance or behavior can be detrimental, both to the employee and the organization. Read more.

Aligning Workers' Compensation: ADA in the WC World

Ideally, your organization’s workers' compensation and nonoccupational disability administration practices follow the same compliance directives as they interact with the ADA and the FMLA — but do they really? Read more.

Departments

The CEO's Desk: Top Compliance Challenges

Managing the key requirements of ever-expanding state mandates is just one of many leave compliance challenges for 2019. Paid parental leave and paid sick leave policies, ADA/ADAAA management, supervisor training, and many other complex issues create hurdles for leave professionals on a daily basis. Read more.

DMEC News: Board of Directors

DMEC Co-founder and current Board of Directors’ Chairperson, Marcia Carruthers will be retiring in December 2019 and will be passing the Chairperson baton to Kevin Curry, Chief Revenue Officer at ReedGroup. Read more.

DMEC News: Supervisor Training

DMEC is releasing a new FMLA/ADA training in early April 2019. The new training is intended to provide front-line managers and supervisors with high-level information about how to identify a potential FMLA or ADA request. Read more.

Compliance Memos: March 2019

The March 2019 compliance memos cover immediate accommodations, attendance as an essential job function, a marijuana case, DOL overtime regulations, and upcoming compliance laws and decisions. Read more.