The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

10 | the essential guide to family and medical leave
How Other Laws and Company Policies Come Into Play
The FMLA isn’t the only law you need to consider when employees need
time off for family or medical reasons. Other federal and state laws might also
come into play, depending on the circumstances. In addition, a company’s
own policies often affect family and medical leave—by, for example,
providing paid sick, vacation, or family leave; requiring employees to follow
certain procedures before taking time off; or dictating how seniority, benefits,
and other issues are handled when an employee is on leave.
This possibility of overlap means two very important things to managers:
• Whenever an employee requests time off pursuant to any law or
company policy, you must ask yourself whether the FMLA applies. The
employee isn’t required to explicitly ask for “FMLA leave”; it’s your
responsibility to determine whether the employee’s time off is FMLAqualified.
An employee on workers’ comp leave, temporary disability
leave, parental leave, or even vacation might be protected by the FMLA,
if the employee meets all of the criteria. And you will certainly want to
count that time off as FMLA leave, not only to make sure the employee’s
rights are protected, but also to put some limit on the total amount of
time an employee can take off in a year.
• When the FMLA and another law or policy both apply, you may have to
provide more than the FMLA requires. If other laws or your company’s
policies give employees additional rights, you must honor them as well.
The employee is entitled to every protection available, whether it is
provided by the FMLA, another law, or your company’s policies.
Overlapping Laws
The basic rule about what to do when the FMLA and another law overlap is
easy to state: You must follow every applicable provision of every applicable
law. In other words, you may not focus solely on the FMLA and ignore your
company’s obligations under other state or federal laws. If both laws apply to
the same situation, this means that you must give the employee the benefit
of whichever law is more generous or provides greater rights.