Yesterday’s Advisor began our refresher for HR professionals calculating intermittent leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Today, more tips for employers to ensure compliance with this tricky aspect of recordkeeping.
We’ve gone over scenarios where the allowed number of hours may be different depending on certain situations. But what about the allowable increments of leave?
Must It Be Calculated in Hours?
The considerations we went over yesterday bring up another important point: must the leave be calculated in full-hour increments? The short answer is No. But the longer answer is a bit more involved.
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Basically, the leave must be calculated in a way that meets two requirements:
- The leave must be calculated in the shortest increment allowed for any other type of leave (or less), and
- The leave cannot be calculated in increments longer than a single hour, even if you don’t allow single hour increments for other leave types.
So, if your organization requires all vacation and sick days to be taken at least a half day at a time, then according to the first requirement, intermittent FMLA leave cannot be calculated in amounts longer than that, such as a full day. However, half-day increments wouldn’t satisfy the second requirement; leave cannot be calculated with increments longer than one hour. Therefore, an employer in this scenario would need to allow intermittent FMLA leave to be taken in 1-hour increments.
In another scenario, let’s say an employer allows any and all types of paid time off or leave to be taken in increments as small as 15 minutes, which is what its time clock rounds to. Because that is the shortest increment allowed for other types of leave, it also must be allowed for intermittent FMLA leave. Both the requirements are satisfied, since the increment is less than 1 hour.
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One exception to note here: for employees who cannot take partial days or shifts off from work, it is permissible to require the entire day or shift to be taken as FMLA leave. This is often a concern in the transportation industry, in which the employee cannot complete just a portion of a shift (e.g., railroad conductors and bus drivers).
For more information, the Department of Labor has helpful guides: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs28i.pdf.