Required Notices for FMLA/CFRA

As with other organizations covered by the Family Medical Leave Act, California employers are legally required to inform employees of their family leave rights. Here are the details of how you must go about doing so.

There are four phases of notice, all of which may be distributed electronically if all employees have access to the electronic information:

1. General Notices

All covered employers must post a general FMLA notice in the workplace. A willful failure to post this notice may result in a fine of $110.00 for each separate offense. (This notice must be posted at each worksite and, if more than one notice is published in a year, the new one must get posted.)

Employers must also provide each employee with a notice of his or her FMLA rights — by including it in the employee handbook or, if the employer doesn’t have a handbook, by
distributing the notice to each employee when hired.

A comprehensive family leave resource for California employers — fully updated!

2. Eligibility Notice

When an employee requests FMLA leave or the employer has knowledge that a leave may be needed for an FMLA—qualifying reason, the employer must notify the employee, within five days whether the employee is eligible to take FMLA leave.

The rules provide that eligibility for leave is determined, and eligibility notice must be provided, at the start of the first instance of leave for each FMLA-qualifying reason in the applicable 12-month period.

All absences for the same FMLA reason are considered a single leave — and the employee retains eligibility for the entire 12-month period. If the employee is ineligible for FMLA leave, the notice must give at least one reason for the ineligibility.

At the same time the eligibility notice is given, employers must provide a notice of “Rights and Responsibilities,” designed to clarify employee expectations. This notice should include:

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• an explanation that leave may be designated and counted against the employee’s FMLA entitlement;
• the employee’s right to substitute employer-sponsored paid leave benefits for FMLA unpaid leave, along with an explanation of the employer’s paid leave policy terms and conditions;
• the employee’s right to maintain health benefits during FMLA leave and an explanation of how to pay health benefit premiums;
•    an explanation of job restoration rights, and;
• information about medical certification, if the employer requires one, along with a certification form that complies with California law.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the fourth required notice, as well as a newly updated leaves resource — specifically for California employers — you won’t want to be without.

Download your free copy of Compliance Guide to the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the California Family Rights Act
today!