Family and Medical Leave of Absence: Using TrackSmart to Manage FMLA

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• published: 06 Apr 2015
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Understand your duties and responsibilities as an employer when an employee needs to take a leave of absence whether it is for family and medical leave, bereavement leave, or a variety of other reasons. Using TrackSmart can help manage and implement your leave of absence policy. http://www.TrackSmart.com https://youtu.be/c10lCpluVXI Employees are bound to need personal time for maternity leave, medical leave, bereavement leave, or any other range of reasons. Be prepared and know the FMLA eligibility requirements for your state and use TrackSmart to manage your leave of absence policy. Hi, welcome back to another Inside Track Video Edition. I’m Helene Kopel, your TrackSmart Product Manager, and today’s topic – handling an employee leave of absence. When we hear about an employee taking a leave of absence, our thoughts immediately go to FMLA – the family and medical leave act – and paid maternity leave or a medical leave of absence. But there are many other reasons an employee might take an extended leave of absence such as bereavement leave, military leave, workers’ comp, jury duty, donating blood, voting etc. and the list goes on and on Firstly, it’s incredibly important to know whether your employee is entitled to FMLA leave or other legally protected time off. Company policy and applicable laws determine how much time an employee can take off for each type of absence, whether the time off is job-protected, documentation/recordkeeping requirements, eligibility requirements, and what portion of the leave, if any, is paid time off. Make sure you’ve got the rules for your business covered in your employee attendance policies and that those policies are communicated regularly and applied consistently to all employees. TrackSmart can help you keep notes as reminders about when your employees are out and the reason. But please remember that TrackSmart is not a compliance solution for FMLA or other legally-protected types of leave. Here are some codes and tips for keeping track of those employee leaves of absence. If you’ve got attendance policies providing for employee bereavement leave, use the Bereavement code to note those absences. If your business needs to comply with FMLA, you can note the time off with the FMLA code and give yourself a note to address the requirements for compliance. You’ll see there are a number of absence codes that either flat out designate a leave of absence or could align with an employee leave of absence such as: FMLA, Leave of Absence, Jury Duty for extended trials, Bereavement Leave, Military Leave, Family Illness, or use the “Other” code for reasons like administrative leave or other personal reasons you may have given extended time off. If your employees are allocated a certain amount of paid time off in their time off banks, you may make an adjustment in the Employee Profile Time off Plan tab – remember to include notes as a reminder to why you’ve added time to the bank. There are many ways TrackSmart can help you keep track of time off taken for FMLA, a medical leave of absence or other type of employee leave. Please make sure you educate yourself and maintain compliance with federal and state laws. You can also visit http://www.HRdirect.com to find solutions and information on how to compliance with the various types of leave laws. So, there you have it. If you’ve got a suggestion for a topic you’d like us to cover, post it in the member community. We’re listening. Until next time, Happy Tracking! Have a question about TrackSmart you’d like answered? Simply email it to MemberServices@TrackSmart.com. Until then, see you in the community (https://tracksmart.zendesk.com/hc/en-us). About http://www.TrackSmart.com TrackSmart is the easy and affordable way for small businesses to track employee attendance with calendars, vacation requests, timesheets, and more all in an easy-to-use online software application. Try it free today.