This Valentine’s Day, Get to Know and Love the Family and Medical Leave Act & Employee Leave Tracking

Happy Valentine’s Day! This holiday we’re counting the ways in which employees and HR can get to know and love the Family & Medical Leave Act, and employee absence tracking. We know that FMLA tracking can get cumbersome at times – eligibility calculations, the snippets of intermittent leave time, obtaining medical certifications, etc., but there are several beneficial aspects of the FMLA we can get to know and love. Just to recap, FMLA entitles covered employees to take unpaid, job protected leave with continuation of group health and insurance coverage for family and medical reasons. Twelve weeks of leave can be taken in a 12 month period. Let’s take a look at some of the things to know and love about FMLA and employee leave management - 1. FMLA gives covered employees 12 weeks of job protected leave in difficult times – to care for their own illness or an illness of a family member. 2. FMLA gives covered employees job protected leave to care for the birth, adoption, or foster placement of a child. 3. FMLA provides leave to covered military members, meaning that spouses, children or parents of a military member can take leave during a qualifying exigency. Some examples of that would include arranging childcare during deployment, attending military-related activities, taking leave to spend time with a military member during a period of rest and recuperation, etc. 4. FMLA has been around for over 20 years, and is trending to expand its guidelines. Check out a few [bills](http://www.popvox.com/blog/2014/issue-spotlight-fmla/) related to FMLA and workplace flexibility that have been introduced to Congress this year and could expand FMLA’s reach. 5. They’re even state leave laws that can be used in addition to the federal FMLA leave. You can check some of them out [here](http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/fmla/). 6. FMLA allows for intermittent leave, so if employees need to see a doctor only sporadically, they don’t have to use all of their leave at once. 7. Employers can select one of four options to determine the 12-month period in which employees can use FMLA. Check out the four ways [here](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/1421.htm). 8. Collaborating with employees, through administration of the FMLA, nurtures enhanced family relationships, which will likely have positive returns in the workplace in both employee attitude and effort. 9. The difference between a headache and a heart throb is often just the place in the body where the throbbing is occurring. Change the throb from your head to your heart by modeling your FMLA administration workflow after the [DOL](http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/employeeguide.htm) guidelines. 10. There’s LeaveXpert! Now there’s a cloud-based system that can help HR track their FMLA leaves anytime, anywhere, over the internet. Check out our free 30 day trial [here](http://www.leavexpert.com). After reading this list, your affection for the FMLA may not have grown but hopefully your relationship has become closer and tighter because you now know the FMLA better than before!