Dive Brief:
- Evicore Healthcare, a South Carolina-based medical benefits management company, has paid a former employee $17,760 in lost wages to settle claims that it violated the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
- U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) investigators found that the company failed to allow the employee to return to work at the conclusion of his or her FMLA leave, despite being cleared by a doctor and providing the employer with the doctor's return-to-work certification.
- The company also failed to maintain records required by the FMLA, DOL said.
Dive Insight:
The FMLA, on one hand, is a fairly straightforward statute. The law entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for family and medical reasons. The FMLA applies to companies with 50 or more employees located within 75 miles of each other, and employees generally must have worked for at least one year and 1,250 hours for the employer to be eligible.
But it still has some nuances that require training and thoughtfulness. For example, qualifying leaves may be protected by the law even if employees never invoke the statute by name. It's up to employers to designate it as such.
Likewise, if an employee needs more time, or can't quite meet the demands of his or her former position, an employer needs to know to consider whether the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) might apply, requiring a reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodations can include leave, job restructuring, modified work schedules, policy exceptions and reassignment to a vacant position, according to U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance.
And finally, relevant to the Evicore allegations, employers must return workers to their former positions, or ones that are substantially similar. Employers that fail to meet these requirements regularly draw the attention of the federal enforcement agencies, so experts continue to recommend FMLA training for managers.