Family Medical Leave Act

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) entitles eligible employees to up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave during any twelve-month period for a variety of defined reasons. While employees are on leave, employers are required to continue to pay for medical benefits.

In 2008, an amendment to the law was passed, allowing for eligible employees who are a spouse, child, parent, or next of kin to a covered member of the armed services recovering from serious injury or illness sustained while on active duty to take up to twenty-six weeks of leave in a twelve-month span in order to care for said serviceman/woman.

To be eligible for FMLA leave, whether 12 week (standard) or 26 week (for active military service members), an employee must have an elapsed 12 months of employment in the past 7 years, and at least 1250 hours of work in the past year.  

Advantage HRM provides the functionality to track employee FMLA eligibility by:

  • Storing the eligibility requirements and querying employee information to make sure the employee fulfills those requirements.  

  • Providing the functionality to track employee FMLA usage.

  • Identifying leave usages as FMLA Leave or FMLA Military Leave, and storing the usage limit amounts. This information is also made available to users through an online inquiry and report on the Leave Management (LEAVM) activity folder.  

  • The Employee FMLA Service Hour and Usage section of the LEAVM activity folder tracks the two FMLA eligibility requirements by displaying the employee’s Service Weeks and Service Hours that are counted towards FMLA.  

  • In order for the Employee FMLA Service Hour and Usage inquiry on LEAVM to identify the correct service hours that can be counted towards the FMLA eligibility requirements, the Service Hours Type (SERV) and Include in Service Hours (ISER) pages are used to link service hours to a specific Service Hours Type (for example, FMLA).  The query then uses the information stored on these two reference pages to identify the correct service hours that should be populated on the query, so the user can easily identify whether an employee has met the eligibility requirements.

  • The Pay and Leave Event (EVNT) page identifies leave events as an FMLA leave or FMLA Military leave.  

  • Time-to-Gross identifies FMLA leave usages, and validates those leaves based on the various FMLA limitations, such as the maximum leave hours and an employee’s FMLA leave eligibility.  

  • The Employee FMLA Balance Report is then created, which pulls employees who are currently taking FMLA leave and their remaining FMLA leave hours balance in order to easily identify any employees who are at the risk of running out of FMLA leave time.

FMLA Processing SetupFMLA Processing Setup

Please refer to Time and Leave Reference Pages in the Advanced - Setup section of this guide for additional information on reference pages required for setup for FMLA processing.  The following reference pages contain information pertaining to FMLA processing.

Gross-to-Net Processing for Service HoursGross-to-Net Processing for Service Hours

Gross-to-Net (GTN) calculates Service Hours by summing all hours for events that have the Include in Service Hours flag selected on Pay and Leave Events (EVNT). Once these events are retrieved, Gross-to-Net then searches the Include in Service Hours (ISER) reference table for the Event Type. For every matching Event Type and Service Hours Type entry found, GTN counts the hours from that Event towards the Service Hours Type for the employee. If multiple Service Hours Types are found for one Event, the Event is included in the calculation of all Service Hours Types. If multiple Events are linked to one Service Hours Type, GTN totals the hours from all Events. The resulting amounts are then stored on the internal operation tables EMPL_SRVC_HRS and EMPL_SRVC_HRS_WKY for each employee. These service hours tables include a column for Service Hours Type so that the multiple definitions of Service Hours can be stored.

Time-to-Gross (TTG) Processing for FMLATime-to-Gross (TTG) Processing for FMLA

When timesheet transactions (for example, TADJ, TIMEG, TIMEI transactions) include FMLA Leave Events, Event Types that have the FMLA Leave or FMLA Military Leave check boxes on EVNT selected, TTG verifies the usage of these leaves. If FMLA Leave is accrued for employees who are eligible to take FMLA Leave, based on the Leave Policy Category table setup, TTG checks whether an employee has sufficient remaining unused FMLA Leave. If a site does not accrue FMLA Leave for eligible employees, the LPCT table setup should allow for the FMLA Leave category balance to go negative so employees are able to enter FMLA Leave Events on their timesheets without FMLA Leave accruals.  

The following are examples of how the FMLA Leave Category and leave substitution logic for LPET is setup when the reduction of an employee’s leave along with FMLA leave usage is required.

Example 1Example 1

FMLA leave usage event for FMLA Leave approved for sickness.

Leave Type: FMLAS (FMLA Sick)

Leave Category: SICK

FMLA Leave Category: FMLA

Substitute Leave Event Type: LWOP (Leave without pay)

The primary leave category is the employee’s sick leave category. The FMLA leave category is reduced at the same time the primary category is reduced. If the employee’s regular sick leave is exhausted, substitution would occur and leave without pay is used.

Example 2Example 2

FMLA leave usage event for FMLA Leave approved for personal reason.

Leave Type: FMLAP (FMLA Personal)

Leave Category: HOLI (Holiday)

FMLA Leave Category: FMLAM (Category for FMLA Military or regular FMLA depending on the reason)

Substitute Leave Event Type:

  1. ANNL (Annual)

  2. LWOP (Leave without pay)

The primary leave category is the employee’s holiday leave category. When an FMLA Leave approved for personal reasons is entered, the employee’s holiday leave balance is reduced first, along with the FMLA leave category. Once the Holiday leave category is exhausted, substitution would occur to reduce the employee’s annual leave, and then leave without pay.

In order to continue to count employee service hours while employees are on leave without pay, a zero dollar positive pay event that is counted towards service hours is associated with the leave without pay leave usage event. For exception paid employees, the unpaid leave usage event is setup to generate a negative pay event to reduce the pay to account for the leave, and generate a positive pay event, which will have a dollar amount of zero. The positive pay event is setup to be included in service hours, so that the hours when the employee is on leave are still counted towards service hours and the employee does not receive any pay. For positive paid employees, the unpaid leave usage event is setup to generate a positive zero dollar pay event that is included in service hours. To generate a dollar amount of zero for the zero dollar positive pay event, the pay event is setup on EVNT to use the PPET rate. The Pay Type Factor Amount is then set to zero on PPET. When this pay detail goes through GTN, service hours are populated on to the Employee Service Hours table since the event is included in Service Hours, and the employee receives a zero dollar pay detail.

Employee FMLA Service Hours and Usage section in Leave Management Employee FMLA Service Hours and Usage section in Leave Management

The Employee FMLA Service Hour and Usage tab on the Leave Management (LEAVM) activity folder, displays the employee’s information that determines his/her FMLA eligibility.

This inquiry provides the option to define the period for which the information should be displayed by using the following search criteria:

The following information is displayed in the FMLA Service Hours section:

The following information is displayed in the FMLA Leave Usage section:

Service Hours Inquiries to support multiple Service Hour Types on Employee InquiriesService Hours Inquiries to support multiple Service Hour Types on Employee Inquiries

In order to support multiple Service Hour Types for Service Hours Inquiries on the Employee Inquiries (EINQ) activity folder, the Service Hours Type field can be used to choose a Service Hour Type on which to perform a query.

Employee FMLA Balance Report - Reporting Employees at risk of losing FMLA eligibilityEmployee FMLA Balance Report - Reporting Employees at risk of losing FMLA eligibility

The Employee FMLA Balance Report batch job is used to inform HR of all users currently taking FMLA leave and their remaining FMLA Balance hours through the creation of the Employee FMLA Balance Report and email notification triggers. Employees who are currently taking FMLA leave or have an effective LREQ in place, are selected to be populated on the report. During the report generation, if an employee’s balance is less than or equal to the minimum stored on the Minimum FMLA Balance Hours parameter, an email trigger is generated to notify HR of employees at risk of losing FMLA eligibility,  

The report displays the following information for each employee selected.  

  • Employee ID

  • Employee Name

  • FMLA Max - If the employee has an effective LREQ in place that approved FMLA Military Leave, then the amount stored on the Annual Maximum Threshold on LPCT for the Category of the FMLA Military Leave Event that the employee uses is displayed.  If not, the amount stored on the Annual Maximum Threshold on LPCT for the Category of the FMLA Leave Event that the employee uses is displayed. If the Annual Maximum Threshold is 0, the positive amount of the Annual Minimum Threshold is displayed.

  • FMLA Leave Usage - The sum of all of the employee’s FMLA Leave taken in the past year is displayed.

  • FMLA Military Leave Usage - The sum of all the employee’s FMLA Military Leave taken in the past year is displayed.

  • Balance - The total of the FMLA Leave Usage and FMLA Military Leave Usage is subtracted from the FMLA Max, and the balance is displayed the here.  

  • At Risk Employee - If the employee’s Balance as identified above in this report is less than or equal to the entered value on the Minimum FMLA Balance Hours job parameter, this column is populated with Yes.

Formula for calculating the FMLA amount are as follows:

  • FMLA Usage (weeks) - This field displays the total amount of weeks of FMLA time used in the past year. This is calculated by taking the total amount of FMLA time used from leave details and dividing by the standard hours per week for the employee based on the assigned Pay Class.

  • FMLA Usage (hours) - This field displays the total amount of hours of FMLA time used in the past year. This total is derived from leave details and converted to hours.

  • Remaining FMLA Leave (weeks) - This field displays the remaining weeks of the FMLA time available to the employee based on what’s already been used in the year. This is calculated by taking the maximum allowable amount of the annual FMLA leave for the leave policy and reducing it by the amount already taken by the employee (FMLA usage). This amount is then converted to weeks by dividing by the standard hours per week for the employee based on the assigned Pay Class.

  • Remaining FMLA Leave (hours) - This field displays the remaining hours of the FMLA time available to the employee based on what’s already been used in the year. This is calculated by taking the maximum allowable amount of the annual FMLA leave for the leave policy and reducing it by the amount already taken by the employee (FMLA usage).