We have an employee who has been using intermittent leave to care for a child with a medical condition. She will run out of FMLA soon, yet her son’s situation is still the same/will require her to take time off. She is a good, dependable employee. What are our options to further help or accommodate her after FMLA runs out?
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Thank you for your inquiry regarding alternative accommodations for an employee nearing the end of her FMLA allotment.
Once an employee has exhausted her 12 week FMLA allotment for the care of a family member, there is no additional federal requirement to provide or accommodate the need for family leave. [Ed. Note: The state in which the employer is located likewise has no such requirement.] However, employers are certainly permitted to offer more generous leave policies and accommodations to their workers as long as the leave policy is fairly and consistently applied. In other words, if extended unpaid leave or flexible work scheduling is allowed for this employee, you may be required to offer the same option to other workers in the future.
For purposes of this inquiry, we assume the employee is nonexempt. If this is the case, one option would be to allow the employee to continue taking unpaid intermittent time off as needed.
Depending on the work being performed and business hours, another option may be to allow the employee to work a flexible schedule, through which she still works a full-time schedule, but is allowed to come in earlier and/or stay later as needed to cover the time spent at the clinic. Essentially, any accommodation made would be based on developing a new internal policy that works with the needs of the business.
If a flexible decision is made to support this employee’s needs and allow her to continue employment, be sure to document the details in writing, again, in the event that a similar offering is requested by other employees in the future.