The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

352 | the essential guide to family and medical leave
Clause 4: Medical Certification
You have to give an employee seeking leave for a serious health condition an
individual written request for medical certification, even if your company’s
family and medical leave policy states that medical certification will be
required.
Clause 6: Substitution of Paid Leave
If your company has a paid leave policy, an employee’s use of it during family
or medical leave is subject to its terms. For example, if your company offers
paid sick leave for the employee’s own illness, you must allow an employee
taking FMLA leave for his or her own serious health condition to use the
paid sick leave available. However, you do not have to let the employee use
that paid sick leave policy to care for family members, since the sick leave
policy does not provide for that.
If your company paid leave policy requires less information than the
FMLA does, you have to limit your request for information to that required
by your policy. Conversely, you cannot require more information from
employees using paid leave for FMLA leave than the FMLA requires, even if
your company usually requests more information for paid leave requests.
Remember, it’s not really a substitution, but an overlap. The employee isn’t
using paid leave instead of FMLA leave but is using the two types of leave
at the same time. So, don’t forget to deduct the paid leave taken from the
employee’s available FMLA leave time.
Clause 7: Parenting Leave
Even though the FMLA requires you to offer only 12 weeks of combined parenting
leave to married employees when both are employed by the company,
your company can offer 12 full weeks of leave to each parent.
Clause 8: Intermittent or Reduced-Schedule Leave
Your company can allow employees to take intermittent or reduced schedule
parenting leave, but the FMLA doesn’t require it. On the other hand,
you can impose restrictions on the leave that you usually can’t impose on
intermittent FMLA leave, such as requiring the employee to take the leave in
larger increments than those your company uses for payroll.