Legislation providing job protected leave to employees

The 1993 United States Federal law known as the Family and Medical Leave Act allows employees covered under this law to take unpaid and job protected leave for a period of 12 weeks for medical and family reasons. Health insurance coverage to the employee is continued during this period with the same terms and conditions. The stated aim of this law is to help employers in balancing their work and family responsibilities and provide equal employment opportunities to both men and women.

FMLA - Family and Medical Leave Act 1993 is applicable to all public agencies, companies with 50 or more employees and all public as well as private elementary and secondary schools.

Reasons covered

Medical and Family reasons for which 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year must be granted are as follows.

·        For the birth and care of a newborn child of an employee within a period of one year.

·        Placement of a child with the employee for adoption or foster care within one year of placement.

·        Taking care of an immediate family member such as parents, spouse or child afflicted with a serious health condition.

·        A serious health condition which renders the employee unfit for work.

Another reason included in the act is “Qualifying Exigencies”. Qualifying exigency arises when the employee’s spouse, son, daughter or a parent is either deployed on active military duty or has been called for active duty. Furthermore, the act also provides for 26 workweeks of leave during a single 12 month period to care for a servicemember who has suffered serious injuries or is very ill provided that the employee is the servicemember’s spouse, son, daughter, parent or next of kin.

Eligibility

The employees must have worked for at least 12 months for their employer clocking at least 1250 hours over the 12 months period in order to be eligible for FMLA Compliance. 

Effectively managing the employees of a company

Human resources professionals are tasked with the job of effectively managing the employees of a company and improving their performance. The current business environment requires HR professionals to not only devise new HR strategies but also comply with all the legal requirements and avoid any kind of liability.

To this end, an HR Employee Handbook is the most important requirement for a company. This handbook is a repository of all the procedures and policies that the employees of the company must be aware of all the time. The problem arises when such handbooks are not regularly updated by the HR professionals. This is because frequent changes made in employment and labor laws do not get reflected in the handbooks which are not updated. As a result, the employees are out of sync with the changes in the legal landscape.

The PHR - Professional in Human Resources must be updated at least on an annual basis in order to ensure that the company follows all the recent federal, local and state laws that have been passed by the respective authorities. Court decisions that could affect the company must also be included in the handbook.

HR professionals can enroll in seminars offered by some agencies for understanding various protections that the employee handbook must contain to protect them and other legal issues that must be updated.

Topics covered

1.     Various tips are provided to frame handbook rules which are based on revisions to FLSA  

 2.     Ways to avoid violating the provisions of FLSA and understanding recent court rulings concerning the issue of unpaid interns.

 3.     Drug free policy rules in view of the state medical marijuana laws.

 4.     Revisions to be made in the FMLA policy according to the rules on same sex marriage.

 5.     Assessing the anti-harassment policy of the company for determining its efficacy and making improvements.

Protective coverage for employees in USA

The different states of USA have systems of rules in place which enable employees who are harmed in the process of doing a job related duty to get compensation from the company. The compensation covers the cost of medical treatment of injuries or illnesses that the employees suffer due to the job. The employees are also entitled to receive a portion of the wages during the time period for which they are not able to work due to medical treatment.

The states reserve the right to decide the rate of compensation when an employee becomes permanently disabled or dies due to an accident caused during his/her work related duties.

The rules

There are certain Worker’s Compensation Rules for both employees and employers.

Who all are covered?

The need for an employer to get worker’s compensation insurance for the employees is determined by rules and regulations set by each state. There are some states that require an employer to have a minimum number of HR Employee Handbook in order to be obligated to purchase worker’s compensation insurance. There are many other states which have mandated that an employer needs to purchase worker’s compensation insurance even if there is a single employee.

Injuries and illnesses covered

Worker’s compensation is meant to provide compensation for work related injuries but some states have also included work related illness under its ambit. Some states, however, have defined specific illnesses for which compensation can be sought by the employee. Injury caused due to an accident, repetitive stress injuries and illness caused due to repeated exposure to some harmful elements during work are all covered under the worker’s compensation insurance.

If an employee gets injured while driving to and from the workplace then it is not considered a work related accident warranting no compensation. Some states also allow employers to subject their employees to drug or alcohol test after an accident and in the event of the employee failing the test the employer can refuse compensation. Self inflicted injuries are also not covered.