The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

chapter 9 | managing an employee’s leave | 203
How often you should request a status report depends on how long the
employee will be on leave and how definite the employee’s return to work
date is. If the employee will be on leave for 12 weeks and has a scheduled
return-to-work date, you might ask for a status report once a month, then
check in with the employee a week or two before his or her leave runs out, to
make sure that the employee is still planning to come back as scheduled. If
the employee doesn’t know how long he or she will have to be off, you might
reasonably request more frequent status reports. And for a shorter leave, you
might simply ask the employee to check in a week before returning, to make
sure everything is still going according to plan.
You should ask for two pieces of information in the status report: whether
the employee still intends to return to work and, if so, when. Don’t try to use
a status report requirement to get medical information—that’s governed by
the recertification process explained in Chapter 8.
You can request that employees make status reports orally or in writing. Of
course, it will be much easier for an employee to pick up the phone than to
write a letter. If you allow oral status reports, however, you must document
any changes to the employee’s leave dates or intent to return to work. If the
employee calls and tells you that he or she is no longer planning to come
back, for example, you should put that in writing immediately. The best
practice is to also send a confirming letter to the employee right away, to
make sure you got it right.
Tip
You might need to talk about reasonable accommodations. If an employee
who is out for his or her own serious health condition expresses concerns
about being able to do the job after returning from FMLA leave, consider
the possibility that the employee might have a disability as defined by
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If so, your company has a
duty to begin a conversation about whether and how you can make it
possible for the employee to perform the job by providing a reasonable
accommodation. It’s best to start talking about possible accommodations
as soon as you learn that the employee might have a disability, to give you
time to make any necessary adjustments before the employee is ready to
return. See Chapter 11 for more on the ADA.