DMEC: Welcome to absence management perspectives, a DMEC podcast. The Disability Management Employer Coalition, or DMEC as we're known by most people, provides focused education, knowledge and networking opportunities for absence and disability management professionals. DMEC has become a leading voice in the industry and represents more than 20,000 professionals from organizations of all sizes across the United States and in Canada. This podcast series focuses on industry perspectives and delves into issues that affect DMEC members and the community as a whole. We're thrilled to have you with us and hope you'll visit us@dmec.org to get a full picture of what we have to offer, from webinars and publications to conferences, certifications, and much more. Let's get started and meet the people behind the processes

Heather Grimshaw: Hi, we're glad you're listening. I'm Heather Grimshaw with DMEC, and we're talking about the evolution of paid sick leave with Josh Seidman, a partner with the labor and employment department of Seyfarth Shaw and co. Lead of the leaves of absence management and accommodations team. Josh, we're so glad you're here with us today to help make sense of an increasingly complex landscape that seems to continually change. So to get us started, I'm hoping that you will give listeners a quick general overview of employee sick and safe leave law types in the US and the challenges they pose for employer compliance.

Josh Seidman: Oh, absolutely, Heather. Thank you so much for having me. Hello to your listeners. Very, very thankful to be here with you all today. So you said it great in the intro. There is a lot of complications, a lot of complexity to unravel with the current landscape of state and local paid sick leave laws in the US. For starters, it's important to know that these laws exist at the state and local levels scattered all across the country. There also is a federal mandate that impacts certain contractors or subcontractors with the federal government. So there is not a full blown federal mandate, but one that does impact certain private employers depending on the nature of their federal contracts and subcontracts. As far as the state laws go, we're looking at today 18 states that have a paid sick leave law or a paid any reason leave law, which we'll talk about later on in today's episode as the evolution of what this landscape has looked like in the recent last few years. There are also some industry specific laws. You can add Virginia as the 19th state to this list where it has a paid sick leave law, but it only applies to certain home health workers. And then Washington, DC also has a law. Some of the states that have these laws, and it's not just limited to one region or one area of the country, you can jump all over the map. California, Oregon, and Washington state on the West coast, on the east coast, most of the northeast, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts have these type of laws. But then you can also look to the middle parts of the country. Minnesota has a new statewide paid sick leave law that started just a few months ago on January 1. Illinois has a statewide paid any reason leave law, a law that very related to paid sick leave, but where the time can be used for any reason that just started up back in January as well. And then you can look at other jurisdictions like New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, among many others that have passed this type of mandate. But not to be outdone, there are also more than two dozen municipalities in the country that have a paid sick leave law or a paid time off. Paid any reason leave law at the local level. Those can include some major cities, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, among many others. But then, in addition, you also have other programs in municipalities that are lesser known, including some counties, Montgomery county in Maryland, Cook county in Illinois, Westchester county in New York, for example. So the landscape is widespread. The laws are constantly changing. And Heather, you asked what are some of the challenges that the paid sick leave landscape currently poses to employers in terms of compliance? And it's a great question, and there are so many layers to that topic. But some of the big challenges that exist today, and we can dive into some more of these later on in the episode. But they include, number one, the variations in the type of paid leave law, paid sick leave law that we're talking about. You have paid sick and safe time laws. I've mentioned the paid any reason leave laws. There are other types as well, like public health emergency leave laws. Each of these programs has more than two dozen, sometimes up to three dozen, substantive technical requirements that employers need to understand and digest and comply with. And those range from, am I covered? Are my workers eligible to what I call the paid sick leave numbers? The amount of time that workers can accrue or get front loaded or rollover at year end or use per year. Then you have more of the actual substance of the laws in terms of the amount of reasons, the nature of the time off. What can I use my time for? Who are the covered family members? Is there a waiting period as a new hire? What are my minimum increments? And then there are some non policy requirements like recordkeeping and new hire notices. Balance notification on pay stubs or company portals and rates of pay, and you smush all of that together and you get a really complicated set of compliance standards when you're thinking about just one of these laws, let alone a few dozen of these laws. As we've, as we've laid out, another huge challenge is that the laws are constantly changing. It is one of the most volatile aspects of employment law in our country, and that is paid sick leave laws. Another big challenge is that the laws are constantly changing. Just in recent weeks, in recent months, we've seen amendments take place to the Connecticut paid sick leave law, greatly expanding the scope of who's a covered employer. We've seen New York state expand its paid sick leave law by adding paid prenatal leave. And just last year, heading into the beginning of 2024, we saw some major, major amendments and changes going on in California with their statewide paid sick leave law, changes to the programs in Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, as well as the two new programs coming online at the statewide level in Minnesota and Illinois that I mentioned a minute ago. And a related final big point. And again, there are many, many challenges for employers here. But another big one is the speed of the updates. The fact that a law can go from enactment to going into effect in a matter of weeks, maybe a handful of months, very different than in the paid family leave law context, where when a program is stood up and enacted, it does not begin for a year, year and a half, two years, maybe even more than two years. In the paid sick leave context, things can happen incredibly quickly and certainly faster than the paid family leave context. And that's just thinking about the laws. It's the laws themselves, the statutes and ordinances. Think about California's program last year, which in September 2023 was amended in some major ways. Those changes went into effect a little over three months later, January 1, 2024. That was the amount of time employers had to deal with partial preemption of some local laws to deal with changes with respect to the accrual and the usage amounts under those programs. In addition, we have rules and regulations that are being updated. The rules and regulations, those happen even faster than the statutes themselves. Very often we'll have a program that gets amended where its regulations or its rules will be changed, and they can go into effect a month later, sometimes even faster than that. This happened with New York City last fall, where its rules were changed in a number of major ways, including potential penalties for employers written policy requirements, and that it was announced in mid September. And by mid October, those changes were in effect. So those are some of the challenges that employers have to deal with in this space. And underlying all of it, very frustratingly, are the challenges with respect to. I had to interplay these changes with a handful of other company policies, vacation bereavement holidays, attendance, short term disability, parental leave, with a number of other laws potentially like kin care laws, vacation time laws, FMLA, the paid family leave laws, and then with a variety of company systems and practices like payroll or HRIs or timekeeping systems, and trying to stand up all the various moving pieces of the substantive challenges. So that's what the paid sick leave landscape looks like in a nutshell. There are many state laws, many local laws. They are constantly changing. They vary from one type to the next, and they have a few dozen requirements baked into each one.

Heather Grimshaw: I'm constantly amazed by the complexity of abiding by and complying with these different laws, but hearing you detail some of that, it really is. It really seems overwhelming. And hearing that you can learn of changes that are implemented one month later is really daunting.

Josh Seidman: Yeah, absolutely, Heather. It's rapid fire in a lot of cases, and one of the big challenges which isn't isolated to the paid sick leave world, but this happens very often with state leave law developments and certainly local municipal leave law developments. There is not a lot of fanfare when these changes are announced. There are a lot of different tracking mechanisms that are out there, but very often it's in a reactive, defensive posture rather than in a proactive way. And that leaves a lot of employers on their back foot trying to pivot and account for these changes, which in many cases can upend policies and programs and paid lease structure that they've spent many, many meetings, many weeks, months, years developing based on the nature of their workforce, all to have it upended when a change or two or three changes come down the pike in an incredibly quick fashion.

Heather Grimshaw: So I think my next question for you really was how different are the sick and sick leave laws that have been passed across the country, and also the municipal leaves and how they overlap with the paid family and medical leave laws? How do employers track and implement appropriately, especially when, as you said, there isn't a lot of fanfare when these laws or changes are announced?

Josh Seidman: That's a great question, and there are a few pieces to the answers. I'll take them one at a time here. For starters, the laws are different. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, these paid sick and safe leave laws, you have a paid sick leave law, a paid sick and safe leave law, a paid safe leave law, these paid any reason PTO laws, public health emergency leave laws, COVID paid leave laws, industry specific paid leave laws, and so forth. So the spectrum of these types of paid sick time laws, to an outsider it might look minimal. But once you peek under a few rocks and dive into the details of these laws, you realize that, that there are many variations. And what can get challenging is that these variations can exist within, say, a single state. Look at California, where you have a statewide program and 789 localities with paid sick leave local laws, where there is some consistency between the state law, especially after the amendments that went into effect back on January 1 of this year, and some of those local laws. But there are still a number of ways, important ways, where the local and the state laws differ. Same thing where I'm based out of here in New York, the New York City local paid sick leave law, and the New York statewide paid sick leave law. Good amount of overlap on a number of topics, but there are some where the two laws do not overlap. In fact, there are some where they butt heads with one another, and that can lead to big, big challenges for companies. And when we're thinking about what are the differences, you're not just looking differences from one state to the next, but those certainly exist. But just again within a state, interstate differences, which becomes a big challenge for employers who might say, oh, well, I only have to deal with one, two of these laws. How hard could it be? It can be really hard. Then when we think about the localities. I mentioned this a few minutes ago, but to reiterate, it is not just cities, and it's not just major cities, but it's also some smaller scale towns, municipalities, counties. And when it's a county wide law, as we've seen, most notably in Cook County, Illinois, that can lead to a patchwork of compliance within just that county. There were a number of municipalities within Cook County, Illinois, that prior to the most recent amendments to that program, which happened very late last year when it converted from a paid sick leave law to a PTO law, paid any reason leave law. There were a number of counties, frankly a majority of counties, that had opted out of the county's paid sick leave law. So technically, the paid sick leave law applied to some portions of the county, but not others. And that again, created its own intra Cook county patchwork of challenges and differences. When we're thinking about the paid sick leave law realm and some of the changes to these, to these types of laws, a big one that's happening very recently, and I've mentioned this a few times now. Is this growth of the related paid time off paid any reason leave law? It has all the same DNA and makeup of a paid sick leave law, minimum increments, eligibility standards, notification requirements, record keeping standards, and so forth. No retaliation provisions. But that time can be used for any reason, as opposed to very regimented, delineated reasons that are still in some of these laws. Quite broad. Broader than what a lot of folks who aren't in the weeds on paid sick leave would think of as covered paid sick leave reasons. But still, it's not. You can use it for anything. It's not paid time off, it's not a personal day. Most of the time there are fixed reasons that these laws call for. But we've seen certain jurisdictions, the state of Maine, the state of Nevada. I've mentioned Illinois. That's the most recent statewide development. And some localities, most notably Cook county and Chicago, both in Illinois, converting their paid sick leave laws into PTO laws. Right, the Illinois, Maine and Nevada, those programs were all PTO programs when they initially went into effect. But we're seeing at least the beginnings of a possible trend of localities or some, maybe even states, converting their paid sick leave law into a paid time off law. And that again will require more differences between the laws and require employers to take a step back and look at their programs holistically and what changes might be needed. Now, you mentioned paid family leave laws and the interplay and overlap between sick leave and paid family leave. There is certainly at a 30,000 foot level, they're both paid time off. They both cover absences related to health. But when you start drilling down, you realize there are a lot of nuance and a lot of distinctions between paid sick leave and paid family leave laws. Paid family leave laws are very often stood up as insurance driven programs operated between the company and the state and the workers, or the company and the insurance carrier or third party administrator and the worker. In the paid sick leave context, more often than not, the interaction is simply between the company and the worker. Paid family leave laws very often will cover broader, longer term, more major life events, bonding with a new child, your own serious health condition, a family member serious health condition, as opposed to paid sick leave laws, which very often will cover more run of the mill, ordinary common day absences. I have a tickle in my throat, I need to run to the pharmacy to pick up some medicine. My child woke up and they were sick. They spiked 102 fever and I need to call out of work for a few hours to take them to the doctor and get some antibiotics. Those are the majority of what sick leave laws cover. Are these, again, more of these run of the mill, everyday absences, even going for preventative care can be covered, right? I'm going for my annual physical. I'm going to get my teeth cleaned. Those things can be covered under sick leave laws, certainly would not be under the paid family leave laws that exist today. Piggybacking on that paid family leave laws also think of them as covering a longer amount of time, while covering a longer duration of absence measured in weeks and months, whereas paid sick leave laws are very often measured in hours and days because of the nature of the absences not being as major a life event as being sort of more ordinary, common day absences. So those are just some of the distinctions between these programs. There are a lot more. There are many more. And one of the biggest challenges for companies that are operating in any of the states with paid sick leave or paid family leave laws, where a lot of the states that have one tend to also have the other. New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Oregon, Washington, they all have both paid sick leave and paid family leave laws on the books. For employers that are operating in those states, coordinating those laws can be very complicated. There are restrictions under either a sick leave law or a family leave law in many contexts where you can't force workers to use their available paid leave while someone is out on a paid family medical leave absence under one of those state programs. So how the employer interplays its existing paid sick leave or PTO or vacation time benefit that can have certain mines, minefields that need to be tightroped and walked through carefully. You also have different standards in terms of how the worker is going to be eligible for the benefit or what absences might be covered or the rate of pay or the increments of use. And all of that needs to be taken into consideration when a company is coordinating between a sick leave law and a paid family leave law.

Heather Grimshaw: I like your use of the word minefields and tightropes because I think those are certainly, it really sounds like those are incredibly appropriate here when you're trying to monitor all these different pieces. And so, Josh, are most of these laws paid sick and safe leave, or are some of them unpaid?

Josh Seidman: That's another really good question, Heather, and absolutely, I feel like I've got my minefield navigation tool scanner making sure I'm not going to misstep or clients aren't going to misstep. That's out all day, every day. There are pitfalls everywhere with these laws. But as far as are they paid or unpaid, what are we typically seeing? The vast majority of the sick and safe leave laws that we're talking about today are paid. It's the acronym PSL or PSSL, right. It's paid sick and safe leave or paid sick leave. Paid sick time. The vast majority of these laws do have a paid component to them. Now, that being said, there are wrinkles, as I expect you expect, and the listeners expect to hear, there are variations and wrinkles within the context of are they paid or unpaid? For example, a number of states do have unpaid safe leave laws, domestic violence victim leave laws, as we often will refer to them as safe leave laws. Those are on the books. Those are distinct from the paid sick leave. Paid sick and safe leave landscape that we're talking about today. But those are out there. You also can have certain of the existing landscape of paid sick leave laws have an unpaid component. Very often, if that exists under a particular program, it will exist for, say, an employer that has a smaller workforce in the state. So there'll be a small employer exception where the time off will be unpaid or partially paid. Partially unpaid. There can also be an initial ramp up period where the law might have, you know, be phased in in different phases and stages where the initial phase or stage might be unpaid and then followed by a paid phase six months, a year, two years later. So that can exist, but is rare in the paid sick leave context. A big point, too for listeners to be aware of when we're talking about are these laws paid or unpaid? The answer most of them are paid. But just saying that it's important to remember that the rate of pay, the formula for calculating how the laws provide that pay that compensation to eligible workers when they're out for a covered reason. That rate of pay standard has, as folks should hopefully be expecting, a lot of variation, a lot of nuance, a lot of divergence between these laws, especially when we're focusing on hourly non exempt employees. It is very often, sometimes it can be the case to pay them at their normal hourly base wage. But in a number of these programs, that is not just the only formula that employers need to follow. Very often the laws will say pay them at their regular rate of pay, which is typically used and most familiar to folks in the overtime premium context. Or there could be a comparable weighted average standard for paying workers. But that weighted average might be over unique look back. Not just the work week in question, but could have a different look back period than employers need to account for or could have certain forms of compensation that companies need to include or are permitted to exclude. You also have this, this concept of rate, in effect, as a standard payment method, which is a term that we throw around and use, but it typically refers to pay the worker, what they would have earned had they worked. And that has many layers to it as well, depending on how the employee is compensated. So a lot of the variation in terms of the pay and the rate of pay and that portion of the paid sick leave laws, it will come down to the legal standard and then also the nature of that employer's workers and the methods of compensation that they receive. So it requires a lot of partnership with payroll departments, understanding what payroll systems are capable of doing and not capable of doing, and again, walking that tightrope between understanding the sick leave law and what's written in the statute of ordinance and then implementing that in practice. So that is how these paid versus unpaid differences can play out in practice.

Heather Grimshaw: That's a great point, too. The difference between that theory and the practical pieces that are entailed can be such a different story. And again, your type example, there is a good one. So do most of the sick leave laws that you're seeing now include mental health as well as physical health? Do they get that granular? Josh?

Josh Seidman: They do, Heather. Yeah, they do. I would say that the vast majority, perhaps even all of the paid sick leave laws will cover both mental health and physical health. It's very common for paid sick leave laws to have a handful of reasons that are consistent from one law to the next. But it is also very common for paid sick leave laws to then go a bit off the rails and throw in more outlier covered reasons, things that folks might not think of when they hear the term paid sick leave law, paid sick leave requirements. So as far as mental health and physical health, yes, most of the laws, if not all of them, will cover something along the lines of an employee's need for diagnosis, care, treatment, recovery of a physical or mental illness, injury, or health condition. And that is very often, regardless of whether the condition has been diagnosed or requires medical care at that particular time. I mentioned, preventative care is also covered under the bulk of these programs and that same physical or mental illness, injury, or health condition. That coverage can also be expanded under most of these programs to the employee's covered family member. And there are very widespread definitions of who is a covered family member, from everything as commonplace as parent, child, spouse, all the way to someone who's the equivalent of a family member based on blood or close association to a designated person component which exists in California and Minnesota. But those absences for taking time off for a covered family member, that will also be broad enough to cover the family members physical or mental illness, injury or health condition. We've also seen this is a new component that just happened less than a year ago in Connecticut. The Connecticut statewide paid sick leave law, which was the first statewide paid sick leave law in this space, first ever, out of the 1819 or so that I mentioned at the beginning of today's podcast. The Connecticut paid sick leave law was amended last year to add a mental health wellness day, and it defines that day, that phrase, as a day during which a covered individual attends to their emotional and psychological well being in lieu of attending their regularly scheduled shift. So there's a lot that can be unpacked with that expansion of Connecticut's program. But it does feel like the contours of that phrase, of that term, mental health wellness day, might be something that other paid sick leave laws join and pick up on in the coming months and years. It also feels like there might be enough, broad enough scope to go beyond perhaps some of the typical absences that paid sick leave laws would cover, making it feel almost akin to up to a personal day rather than a sick day. I'll also shout out the PTO paid any reason leave laws that are proliferating around the country. They'll cover absences for any reason. So that will include mental health, physical health as well. And I'll finish off this response by just saying paid sick leave laws beyond what I've listed so far. They can cover things like public health, emergency related closures for your child's school, your employees workplace, maybe a family member's place of care. They can cover safe time absences. Absences where the worker or family member is a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault or stalking. A handful of other absences under that umbrella. And then they can go even broader. That some laws will cover bereavement leaves, for example. That was just added to Colorado's statewide paid sick leave law last year in August. I believe they can cover closures related to bad weather or power outages, depending on the location. Some programs can even go as broad as covering what we typically think of as bonding leave or parental leave under the paid family leave umbrella, right? So that that bonding, that time off to care for a new to be with a new child. That can be covered under some of these programs as well. So it really is a broader spectrum of what is covered under these programs. But mental and physical health will very often be included.

Heather Grimshaw: That's a great answer. Thank you so much for the nuances that you shared. And I think expansion that you mentioned in Connecticut is particularly interesting and relevant in terms of watching for emerging trends as you note there. So that will be interesting to watch. So as background for listeners for the next question. Josh and the Seyfarth-Shaw team published paid sick leave updates and DMEC is publishing these updates on the website. I will drop the link to the page into the notes section of this so that listeners can go in and hear or, excuse me, so that listeners can go in and read some of these updates. And in the most recent paid sick leave post on the DMEC website, Josh, you wrote about $3.6 million collected in New York City for violations of the Earned Safe and Sick Time act in 2023. Is that amount unique or are these fines more common than not?

Josh Seidman: That's a really good question, Heather. Happy to jump in and thank you for shouting out the sick leave content that my team and I have a great team of paid leave experts that I work with every day, far scattered all around the country and very valuable relationship with the MEC. So I love working with you all on these issues as well. The article, it was really a fun article to put together. I mentioned I'm based in New York, based out of Syphart's New York City office. The Earned Safe and Sick Time act, which going back to 2014 to April 2014 when it was rolled out, was just known as the Earn Sick Time act, they didn't add save time for a number of years within that program. Right? So you talk about how these laws ebb and flow and the contours change. That was one of the changes that we've seen in New York City over the last decade. But the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which is the agency that enforces the New York City earn Safe and Sick Time act, they are, and this ordinance continues to be one of the most actively enforced paid sick leave mandates in the country. New York City very regularly will be proactive with this enforcement going after employers across industries, union, non union, part time, full time. It's very regular for this agency to again put their pedal to the metal and go after employers for noncompliance. And it's been that way for a number of years. So the amount this $3.6 million in change that was collected in New York City last year for violations of the Earn Safe and Sick Time act, or ESTA, as it's also called. That's one of the, I'd say the higher amounts of enforcement that we see between different sick leave jurisdictions. But I'll also say that a number of jurisdictions do not publish, certainly do not make it easy to find, but generally do not publish and release to the public their enforcement efforts and the amounts of fines collected and restitution provided to employees and so forth. So, to New York City's credit, the city has done and has been doing this consistently for a number of years. Every year or every year and a half or so, roll out updated content on their enforcement efforts of not just pay sickly, but other ordinances and mandates that the Department of Consumer Worker Protection enforces as well, like the flexible scheduling for workweek law. In New York City, for example, the amount that was collected last year, I actually went back to the city's 2022 data and enforcement information, and the amount that was collected in penalties in 2023, which was about 435,000 or so, was more than the amount and penalties collected in 2022, which was just a hair under 400,000. But for restitution to workers, which was about 3.15 million last year in 2022, that number was actually just a hair under 6 million in restitution. And so we see the enforcement of this law, it's been around for a number of years. It has some big, heavy hitting metrics that the city puts forward in terms of collecting back wages and restitution for workers whose rights they deem have been violated, and then go through the administrative audit process, which very often can take on the feel of a class action complaint very quickly in these administrative settings. In 2021, just for basis of comparison, the amount of restitution collected for sick leave violations was around 2.9 million. So it jumped up to almost double that amount in 2022, came back down to a bit over 3 million in 2023. And it is, like I said, one of the most aggressively enforced paid sick leave laws in the country. Some of the other jurisdictions that have aggressive enforcement because New York City is not on its own little island here, there are certain states, Massachusetts, California, Arizona, that can have very proactive enforcement as well, and a number of localities, including Seattle and Los Angeles, that are also very hot and heavy with their paid sick leave enforcement, as are other jurisdictions. Those are non exclusive examples. And one of the things for employers to pay attention to when they're thinking through, well, how much should I worry about paid sick leave law compliance? These laws are so convoluted, they're so technical. Do I really have to deal with each of these nooks and crannies, it's important to take a step back. Think about sick leave compliance holistically, understanding that there are penalties that can be measured in double or treble damages or per day per worker, per worker, per day violations. Depending on the jurisdiction, there can be punitive damages and injunctive relief. I mean, the whole sort of spectrum of possible penalties and remedies is out there. But when you're thinking about sick leave laws, that's part of the equation. Thinking about what's the nature of enforcement, what are the legal requirements, what are the penalties? But then also practical components too. What is my footprint in that jurisdiction? What is the cost and potential absenteeism going to look like if we make certain changes? How does this all interplay with my other policies and my company systems? How litigious is my workforce? What is the nature of my workforce? Highly unionized, lots of turnover, folks that are very mobile, and putting all of that together, that's when you can really think through how to deal with these changes as they come through, and then the enforcement of the agencies that deal with these laws.

Heather Grimshaw: That's great context. Thank you so much. And I think especially, I like the reference to the nooks and crannies because as you're, I'm taking furious notes as I'm listening to you talking. There are just so many pieces and parts to this as there always are with disability and absence management topics. But this one seems, especially with all of the fast and furious changes, incredibly difficult and daunting to track. So I think holistic view recommendation is a very good one. Are there any trends that you see across the country when it comes to mistakes employers are making with employee sick and safe leave laws that you would be willing to call out here?

Josh Seidman: Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to, Heather. Certainly at a high level at least, sick leave compliance, it can mean a lot to different companies. Some companies can't stand these paid sick leave laws. Some companies will take them very seriously. Most companies sort of fall somewhere in between. They are incredibly frustrating. The volatility in the space, the fact that when you deal with compliance, it's not just the statute or ordinance, it is the statute and ordinance or ordinance plus the regulations, plus the administrative faqs and model notices and posters and so forth. And that can be burdensome to have to track each of those different elements and pay attention to potential changes, which, as we said earlier, especially in the context of faqs and regulations, come with very little fanfare. So it is, you know, when you have a multi state or nationwide workforce dealing with the spectrum of more than 40 of these different types of laws, that can be a really big pill to swallow. Some of the areas for employers to pay attention to when we're thinking about compliance. One, for example, is I don't even need to have a written policy, right? I'll comply in practice, and some companies will go that route and potentially lean on model notices and posters and things. But that approach can only get you so far. It can work in some places, but not everywhere. Important to connect with council and folks that are the subject matter experts in this space. To understand that there are a number of locations, New York City, Seattle, among others, that have very robust written policy requirements. You have to have a written policy and it has to include X, Y, Z, ABC, all these different topics in it. Another big point, plenty of companies will want to use, and understandably so, their existing time off policies for compliance. I want to use my PTO, my personal day, my vacation time policies for compliance with these programs. Can't I do so? And the answer is typically, yes, you can, but there are conditions, there are requirements that employers need to pay attention to. And it's very often more than just providing the right amount of time, more than just saying, oh, well, because I've got a PTO policy that gives three, four, five weeks of time off to an employee, depending on seniority and when they were hired, I'm compliant. And you might be compliant with the amount of time with the accrual requirements or the usage amounts. But very often paid sick leave laws will say, if you want to use a non sick paid time off policy for compliance, you have to do something more. You've got to go another step or two or three. Beyond that, you have to apply the same conditions of the paid sick leave law to the time off benefit or to a portion of the time off benefit. And that requires very careful, one step at a time navigation of the compliance for both the policy, the written policy, and then updating your practices, making sure managers are trained properly, HR is trained properly and understand what the requirements are when employees are taking paid time off, PTo or personal time, but they're doing so for a protected absence, and you're using that vehicle, that policy, for compliance with sick leave law. So that gets to sort of another very important point, making sure that managers and HR are trained properly, right, they understand all the interconnected pieces of these laws, the increments, the treatment of new hires, the no discipline, no denials, proper notice practices and documentation and record keeping practices, and so forth. And there are plenty of tools out there to assist. Beyond just the policy rolling out periodic trainings or designing guides, managers guides, HR guides, or faqs for managers, or even for workers. Those can be some of the best resources to help a company with paid sick leave law compliance. I mentioned rate of pay earlier. I'm not going to dive into that again. But just to reiterate, making sure paid sick leave PTO, if it's a paid any reason leave law, are being paid at the right rate, especially for non exempt employees. Incredibly important. That's another big one to pay attention to. And then I'll say maybe a final shout out here is to remember that there are other policies and systems that are impacted that are touched by a paid sick leave mandate. In particular, attendance policies and practices need to be updated. They need to account for paid sick leave law standards for notice and absenteeism, and so forth. Typically, these laws will not allow any discipline, even if the absence is unplanned, let alone a planned absence. But even for unplanned, unscheduled, unforeseeable absences, and when you're thinking about paid sick leave laws across the country, we've hit this point a lot today, but I'll finish off with it. Remember that compliance is not static, right? This is a volatile space. The landscape is changing. It is not fixed. Floor the laws. Even if you're in compliance with just with a program, you've gone through the process of updating it with your systems and your policies, which is great. The law can be tinkered with, it can be adjusted, or it can undergo a whole scale amendment like we saw in Chicago and Cook county recently. So remember that paid sick leave laws are changing, and it's best to pay attention to your policies, your practices. Take a peek at them at least once per year, and then depending on how these laws are being rolled out, sometimes more frequently than that.

Heather Grimshaw: That's fantastic detail and really helpful guidance, Josh. Thank you so much. And before we sign off, I just wanted to flag again the series of paint sick leave updates from the Seyfarth Shaw team. I have dropped that link into the notes section of this podcast episode along with some of the resources that were referenced, and encourage listeners to check out the page and visit it often for updates. As Josh notes, this is a volatile space and we're seeing lots of updates to the page. So appreciate that very much. Thank you again, Josh.

Josh Seidman: My pleasure, Heather. Thank you so much for having me.