The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

190 | the essential guide to family and medical leave
and find out if they’ll need additional resources or help to handle the additional
work. Give the employee’s outside contacts—such as clients, suppliers,
and so on—a little information about the employee’s leave, including the
name of someone else to call if they have any questions or concerns.
Continuing Employee Benefits During Leave
While an employee is on FMLA leave, you must continue the employee’s
coverage under your company’s group health plan, just as if the employee
had been working continuously. If the employee usually has to contribute
towards the premium, you may continue to require that contribution,
but your company must continue to pay its share of the premium as well.
Whether you have to provide other types of benefits during leave depends on
your company’s policies.
The employee is entitled to continue the same type of coverage and benefit
levels as before the leave. For example, if the employee’s family was covered,
then the continuation must include family coverage. However, any changes
to the benefits plan, new plans, premium increases, and so on still apply to
the employee. And, employees on leave have the same right to change their
coverage as they would have had if they were employed. So an employee
on leave during an open enrollment period has the same right to change
coverage as employees who are actually working during that period.
Employees do not have to continue their benefits during FMLA leave
if they don’t want to, perhaps because the premium is significant and the
employee won’t necessarily require benefits during leave because he or she
has benefits from a different source. However, because you must restore the
employee’s benefits when you reinstate the employee—and you must do so
immediately, without any waiting period, physical examination, or other
requalification procedure—you might have to continue the benefits and
seek reimbursement later from the employee. (Chapter 10 covers benefits
restoration when an employee returns to work.)