Many American and Canadian employers alike are aware of the employment law for employees’ rights to time off. However, there’s a wide range of laws that administer workplace leaves for reasons concerning personal or family illness, pregnancy, disability, organ donation, personal emergencies, and more.
Due to outdated tools and human error, inaccurate data is expected in administrative tasks such as payroll and Leave Management. Furthermore, because of the uncertainty and sensitivity in the workplace, HR departments are commonly kept up all hours of the night dealing with nightmare scenarios involving such matters.
What is Leave Management?
Leave Management is a set of procedures the company follows (complying with local, state, federal laws, and organization policies) that governs the application, approval, and tracking of leave for employees.
Multiple tasks and departments are associated with these processes, like disclosing the application to multiple decision-makers and payroll administration. However, certain challenges make the process even more complicated.
Challenges of Leave Management
Keeping Track of Employees on Leave
Holidays are essential to your employees, and you may not be able to turn down their requests for time off. In addition, HR and managers will have difficulty dealing with leave requests if they don’t have clear procedures in place ahead of time.
A lack of effective leave management makes it difficult to keep track of your employees’ vacation time. Nobody has the inclination or the time to manually keep track of all the time employees take off each month or year. In addition, managing multiple employees’ data can lead to misinterpretations.
Leave Abuse
Employers have difficulty enforcing policies against excessive use of paid leave because of several laws that protect the rights of employees.
However, many leave laws allow employers to ask employees to provide reasonable documentation for the leave. Drafting such requirements on leave policies can also reduce the chances of misused paid leaves.
Verifying the Reason Behind Leave
The employer should not simply accept the employee’s request for time off when it is requested. As we discussed above, an employee’s leave must be verified by an employer using the necessary documentation/certification.
However, not all leave laws allow for certification requests in all circumstances, which must be remembered. Employers can avoid legal repercussions if they know when and how to verify a worker’s need for time off.
Mistakes in Payroll Management
Payroll is directly affected by poor leave management. Confusing situations can arise if you don’t know whether the employee’s leave was paid or unpaid. This leads to a poorly managed payroll, where employees receive incorrect salaries because it is difficult to track the provided leave.
Salary is an essential consideration for employees. To establish themselves as successful professionals with respectable salaries, they put in a lot of time and effort. Payroll that isn’t well-managed tends to fluctuate. In turn, workers may find the job tedious if they don’t receive the correct wage.
Leave Interaction
There are numerous leave laws in the United States, some of which overlap and even conflict with each other. Therefore, employers must know how the various types of leave interact with one another if their employees are eligible for multiple types of leave simultaneously.
As you can see, it is easy for any HR professional to feel challenged when attempting to determine whether an employee is eligible for leave under PDL, FMLA, CFRA, or a combination.
Return to Work Issues
An employee must be reinstated to their previous or equivalent position upon returning from a leave unless an exception exists. A position’s benefits, pay, and other working conditions must be nearly identical to those of the employee’s previous work to be considered equivalent. Retaliation claims can arise if the employee is not given the same or an equivalent position.
Get a 1-Yr LMS Membership Mentorship Program
The reasons behind Leave Management challenges are many but, in the end, it boils down to one fact; a lack of knowledge regarding leave laws. However, one solution is enough to resolve all of those problems — 1 Year LMS Membership Mentorship Program.
Our program is not only intended to teach you the basic regulations but also to teach you a system so that any HR professional can solve challenges on their own.
An expert witness, Ms. Beth De Lima, has used the same system (for over 30 years) and helped many businesses manage Medical Leaves and Accommodations.
What else you can expect from our program?
- Get 24/7 access to our library of “done for you – just fill in the blanks” Federal and State of California medical leave compliance forms and letters
- Avoid FMLA abuse and lawsuits using our pre-written “fill-in-the-blanks,” Medical Leave compliance forms and letters, and “how-to” training
- Expert training allows you to easily implement our system, save time, money, and avoid stress in Medical Leaves Management
- Learn from an HR expert with over 30 years of complex Medical Leave experience under her belt — all from the convenience of your home or office
- Get concise training, forms, letters, checklists, and workflows to help you easily navigate through the rough waters, such as the transition from FMLA to ADA
So, if you’re ready to get to work on ensuring 100% compliance with all Medical Leaves and Accommodations, don’t wait. Visit: www.leavemanagementsolutions.com/1-year-LMS-membership-mentorship and buy now!