The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

104 | the essential guide to family and medical leave
(but uniform) method for employees in those other states. In this limited
situation, using two different methods to calculate the leave year—one in the
state where it is mandated and the other in all other locations—won’t give
employees the right to choose whichever leave method works best for them.
See An Expert
Multistate employers may need some expert help. You can find
information on each state’s family and medical leave laws in Appendix
A, but if you have to integrate various state laws with the FMLA, you’ll
appreciate some advice from a lawyer.
Counting Time Off as FMLA Leave
Under the FMLA, eligible employees are allowed to take off 12 workweeks
in the 12-month leave year. If an employee takes FMLA leave all at once,
you won’t need to consider the employee’s hours or schedule in determining
how much leave is available. Whether the employee works part time or full
time or puts in plenty of overtime, an employee who takes a whole week off
at once has used up one week’s worth of FMLA leave (subject to the rules
set out below).
If an employee takes intermittent or reduced-schedule leave, however,
you’ll need to figure out how many total hours of FMLA leave are available
to the employee. In this situation, the employee’s work hours determine
how much leave the employee can take. We explain how to make these
calculations in “Intermittent and Reduced-Schedule Leave,” below.
Whether an employee takes FMLA leave all at once or a little bit at a time,
you’ll need to know what time off counts against that 12-week entitlement.
Here are the rules:
• Time spent working is not FMLA leave. If an employee is on full-time
FMLA leave but continues to work (perhaps putting in a few hours at
home), the hours worked don’t count as part of the employee’s FMLA