The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

30 | the essential guide to family and medical leave
EXAMPLE: Your company’s employee handbook states that an employee needing
leave must call in at least 30 minutes prior to the start of his or her shift. Jaye suffered
a seizure that caused her to lose consciousness early one morning. She was scheduled
to start work at 8:00 a.m. Because she was en route to the hospital and in the
process of being admitted, she was unable to call until 9:30 a.m. Should you discipline
Jaye for violating company policy?
Better not. The 30-minute call-in policy may violate the FMLA, because the FMLA
allows employees to give notice of an unforeseeable need for leave “as soon as practicable”
(see Chapter 7). Jaye was unable to call in until 9:30. You need to revise your
company handbook to conform to the FMLA notice requirement.
If your company doesn’t have an employee handbook or written policies,
then you have to give a written description of FMLA rights and obligations
to each employee who requests FMLA leave. We’ve included a sample FMLA
general information form approved by the DOL in Appendix C and on the
CD-ROM at the back of this book.
TIP
Write up an FMLA policy. Rather than giving general FMLA information
to employees each time they ask for FMLA leave, it’s better to create an
FMLA policy and distribute it to every employee. Not only is this more
efficient, but having a standard policy also ensures that you’re giving each
employee the same information.
Finally, if you do already have a policy, you’ll want to make sure that it has
all the information that’s legally required. We’ve included a sample FMLA
policy in Appendix B, which you can use to draft or modify your own
company policy.