FMLA, Volunteer Time & Flexibility

On Jun 16, 2023

In the latest installment of New Jersey Business Magazine’s Ask the Experts column, HR professionals working with the New Jersey Business & Industry Association respond to executives’ inquiries on three interesting workplace issues.

How do we know if we’re a “covered employer” and required to provide FMLA to eligible employees?

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides covered employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for family or medical related reasons, such as to care for a sick family member or the birth or adoption of a child. Private-sector employers that have 50 or more employees for at least 20 workweeks (does not have to be consecutive) in the current or preceding calendar year are required to provide FMLA to eligible employees.

When counting your employees, include any employee whose name appears on your payroll any working day of a calendar week, regardless of whether they received compensation for the week.

Once your organization meets the 50-employees-for-20-workweeks threshold, it remains covered until it reaches a point in the future when it has no longer employed 50 employees for 20 (nonconsecutive) workweeks in the current and preceding calendar year.

It’s important to note that public agencies and local educational agencies (such as school boards and public/private elementary and secondary schools) are covered by FMLA regardless of the number of employees.

We want to offer more flexibility, but have a hard time staffing our shifts as it is. Any suggestions?

There are a few things you can do to offer flexibility while still maintaining the coverage you need:

• Implement self-scheduling. Self-scheduling is when you let your employees know what shifts are needed and allow them to choose when they are going to work.
• Communicate with employees about open shifts and encourage them to share changes to their schedules with managers or the team to keep shifts covered.
• Offer incentives, such as bonuses or shift pay, to persuade staff to pick up additional or less desirable shifts.
• Offer cross training. Not only does this give your employees the opportunity to learn a new skill, but it will give everyone more flexibility as they can cover different shifts and roles.
• Look at offering a variety of shift lengths or different starting times.

My employees have been asking about volunteer time off. What is that and how should we set it up?

Volunteer time off (VTO) is a form of paid leave that gives employees their regular compensation for hours spent in service to an approved charitable or community organization. If you decide you want to offer this as an option for your employees, you should consider these questions:

• How many hours will you designate as VTO? We wouldn’t recommend taking anything away from current paid leave banks.
• How will employees request VTO? Is it part of your usual time off request process or do you want a separate process?
• Can employees roll over unused VTO or is it a use-it-or-lose-it benefit?
• Do you want to pre-select the organizations and activities, or can employees select their own? If employees select their own, will you approve the organization first? If so, who will be responsible for vetting the organizations, and what criteria will you use? 

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