FMLA- What You Need To Know
Continuing our new series for all business owners interested in making sure they are compliant with today’s HR Regulations, we are going to look at FMLA. As an HR Professional, I can barely keep up with all of these various laws and often have to refer to my handy dandy list of websites and law references. For your benefit, I have posted these below this post. These will be very quick spinets for your viewing pleasure. If you need additional information or have questions surrounding this post or any of the others in the series, please feel free to contact me using the information below. So, let’s get started!
Overview of the Law:
Compliance is required for companies with 50 or more employees (10 employees for government contractors). This law requires a company to allow its employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid protected leave in any 12 month period for childbirth, adoption, serious health condition experienced by the employee or one of their immediate family members.
Potential Consequences:
An employee can bring a lawsuit against their employer for a violation of FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) to recover lost compensation, reinstatement, promotion, and attorney’s fees.
Who enforces it:
Department of Labor is the main governing body for this regulation.
Record Keep Requirements:
Keep all basic employment data as referenced in earlier posts. Additionally, be sure to keep anything related to the employee during the dates of the FMLA leave including hours of leave, documents describing their benefits, premium payments and any type of correspondence. Proceed with caution in dealing with someone on FMLA leave.
Important Details:
In order for someone to be considered eligible for FMLA leave, they had to have worked at least 1250 hours over the last 12 months. For more information, please go to the DOL.gov or review information from the blog on FMLA from the HR Adviser.
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Ok, as promised, here are some friendly websites for you to consider and cross-reference. They are some of my favorites for HR related questions:
HR Outsourcing: http://www.SourcePointe.net
Payroll Outsourcing: http://www.SourcePointe.net
General HR Questions: http://www.shrm.org
Great HR Blog: http://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com
About the Writer:
Trent Cotton has spent a number of years in management and business consulting. After spending some time in the field, he joined the HR department, beginning in recruiting and eventually serving as the Department Head of HR for one of the major lines of business. With such a varied background, he works to bring all of these together to help churches and other Christian organizations incorporate some common business practices into their ministries to enable them to better serve the Kingdom. He currently works for SourcePointe, an HR Outsourcing Agency while continuing to own and operate Christian Management Consulting as a ministry. In his free time, he also writes a lot on Church Development as a Church Consultant.
Christian Church Development 