The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

chapter 6 | how much leave can an employee tAke? | 99
You’ve come a long way: You’ve determined that your company is
covered by the FMLA. You’ve confirmed that the employee seeking
leave is FMLA-qualified and that the reason for leave falls within the
FMLA. Now it’s time to figure out how much leave the employee has—or
has left—to use.
The FMLA requires your company to give eligible employees up to 12
workweeks of leave in a 12-month period. But when does that period start
and end? What if the employee took leave last December and wants more
leave this July—does the employee get another 12 weeks of leave because
it’s a new calendar year, or does the employee have to wait a full 12 months?
How much leave is available to an employee who works odd hours, part
time, or overtime? What if the employee wants to take only one day—or one
hour—off a week, not 12 weeks at once?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions off the top of your head,
you aren’t alone. In this chapter, we’ll give you the information you need to
determine exactly how much FMLA leave is available to your employees.
We explain how to choose the right 12-month leave year for your company,
how to measure 12 weeks of leave in the 12-month leave year, how to handle
requests for intermittent leave or reduced-schedule leave, how to calculate
leave for employees who work part time, and more.
Counting the 12-Month Leave Year
Each eligible employee is entitled to 12 weeks of FMLA leave per year.
But what constitutes a “year”? Believe it or not, it’s up to your company,
at least in part: Employers may choose one of four different methods for
defining the “leave year” in which an eligible employee may take leave.
Whichever method you choose, it’s important to apply the same method to
all employees. If you don’t, employees can use whichever method is most
advantageous to them.