Name: Stumped by Complex Leave Laws? Ask Our Compliance & Product Experts Anything
Uploaded: 2026-08-20T18:08:06.542Z
Duration: 30 min 58 s
Description: Stumped by Complex Leave Laws? Ask Our Compliance & Product Experts Anything

Transcript for "Stumped by Complex Leave Laws? Ask Our Compliance & Product Experts Anything": Welcome, everyone. We'll give it just a few seconds more to let folks get in and settled, and then we'll get started. While we wait, would love to see where y'all are from. If you wanna drop it in the chat. I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Beautiful sunny summer day. Philly, Michigan, Connecticut. Awesome. Welcome. Good to see another PA person out there. It's, rainy here in Pennsylvania. All over. I love it. Excellent. Alright. And good to know our chat works. Awesome. Well, hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our ask me anything session on leave management. I have with me here the wonderful Angela Surra, principal benefits expert at Mitratech, bringing twenty nine years of insurance, benefits compliance, and leave administration knowledge to our conversation today. Thank you, Angie. And I'm Rachel Wyngaard, senior product manager for our leave solution. I started my career in HR, nearly ten years in talent acquisition and talent management, before shifting to product in the HR tech space. So we are both, so happy to be with you here today. Couple of quick housekeeping items before we dive in. This session is being recorded and will be sent to you afterwards. So, hopefully, that, resource will free up some note taking and let you participate, in the session more fully, especially in those polls. There will be a couple of those today, so keep a lookout. And then please, use the q and a box for questions. We'll be keeping an eye on that. And even if we don't have time to get to all of them today, we'll certainly do our best. But, if we don't get to them all, we will follow-up with you on those. So we won't leave any questions unanswered. Alright. Our agenda for today, Angela's gonna share, some thought leadership insights to get us started. Then I'll do a live demo of our new lead solution, and then we'll jump right into the live q and a, and then we'll wrap with an exit poll. Without further ado, Angela, take us away. Awesome. Thank you. So excited to see everyone from all over the place. So my, I guess, initial question for you all and something to think about is, you know, leave laws are evolving faster than ever. And my question is whether or not you or your team are keeping up. And if you happen to attend our session, mastering the life cycle of an employee on June 30, where Cara and Victoria went through some really great information about the various leave laws, some steps and details when administering leaves, different categories of leaves. I wanna spend the next few minutes on why my initial question may be a little bit harder to answer than most people expect and why I kinda know that firsthand. So lead administration and compliance run on a pretty large stack of laws, not just one. And these laws run on different timelines. They use different eligibility tests, require different paperwork, but an employee doesn't really experience them as separate laws. They experience them that experience them as just one leave request. And and, really, it's on us to sort out which laws apply in what order, whether they run concurrently or not, and it's not static. States are still actively passing new paid leave programs, and the ones already on the books can get amended, whether it's contribution rate changes or benefit caps, eligibility thresholds. And sometimes that happens, every year. What was accurate guidance essentially twelve months ago could be different today, and getting this wrong definitely creates some risk and exposure. And it can also show up as inconsistent administration, one manager handling leave differently maybe than another. It could show up as a missed deadline. It can also show up as the interference or retaliation claim that follows maybe a denied or mishandled leave, and that tends to cost far more than the leave itself would have. And and I wanna talk a little bit about why I know this isn't theoretical. So before Mitratech, I had the opportunity to administer FMLA and leave programs directly for several employers. And as I'm sure you know, the struggle was real. Multiple laws could apply to the same leave request at the same time, spread across dozens of employees at once, each at a different stage. And it was keeping straight which laws applied to each situation in which state and whether those laws ran concurrently or consecutively because getting that wrong could either shortchange an employee's protections or expose the employer to a claim they didn't see coming. It was the paperwork, collecting benefits contributions, certification forms, doctor's notes, recertification schedules, and each one had its own deadline, its own follow-up requirements, its own way of falling through the cracks, basically. And employees were at all different points in their leaps, some just starting, some recertifying, some coming back to work, some intermittent and using leave in maybe unpredictable chunks, and it was the volume. New leave requests didn't wait for me to finish the last one. They came in continuously on top of everything else that was already in motion. So I felt that gap between what compliance requires on paper and what one person with a spreadsheet and a filing system and good intentions can really keep up with in real time. You know, the rules themselves, they're documented, and we have a ton of information in the Mineral platform about them. What's harder is how they overlap and whether your systems and your people can execute them consistently for every employee without depending on one person's memory holding all the rules together at once. And everything I've just described would have been far easier for me back then with the right technology platform in place, And that's the gap that Rachel and I wanna close for you. Rachel, why don't you show everyone how our new tool can help fill that gap? So you're on mute, Rachel. Thank you so much. Of course. Thanks, Angela. I love what you said about employees seeing this as one leave despite the job of administering that leave, looking at an entire stack of laws. That's so true when it's a pain point I hear from customers, that I speak with. And and this is exactly you're exactly right. This is the gap that we're building, meet your tech leave to to close, focusing on that compliance risk, the overarching, patchwork of laws that's hard to navigate, the fact that it's not a check the box and done situation. There's a lot of work involved to manage that case from end to end. It can be messy. And then most importantly, the employee experience at the center of this is a real human with a major life event, a critical moment that we want to show up for our employees for. But it's a struggle given how, buried we get in navigating compliance and and admin work. So let's take a look here. Get my screen up. So I'm going to start with an overview of the leave solution. I'll show you a couple examples of assessing a leave case. We'll take a look at how we bring in your company policies, and then we'll wrap with, where we're headed because we've got some exciting things in store for leave management. So Mitratech Leave is an AI guided tool that takes a leave request and figures out exactly what an employee is eligible for under the law and your company policy. It's gonna tell you step by step how to administer it so that you're never starting from scratch or guessing. And we are leveraging our, deep seated Mitratech, expertise, compliance experts here. We built out a full coverage leave rules engine. So all federal, state, and local laws. And then our AI features focus on guiding you through this leave process. But the output that you'll get is deterministic and, repeatable, important feature of what's behind the scenes here at Mitratech Leave. So let's see it in action. So, in any leave scenario, how we start, we get that request, comes across our our desk, and I've got an example right here. Anna Choi, she's placed off work on bed rest, starting on the eleventh prior to a c section on August 29. So I'm gonna take this, natural language description of the leave. I'm gonna type it in here. System recognizes the employee, asks me to confirm. We wanna make sure that it's the the right person. Leave can be integrated with your HRIS. So by recognizing and confirming that employee record, it's confirming and leveraging her specific details, and doing a couple things. So got the employee, confirmed the record. It took that natural language description, and it identified the qualifying reasons for leave. And now it's gonna prompt me for anything missing or anything specific about the leave scenario that's needed to evaluate, this particular leave. So, I'm actually gonna, have the system tell me when she needs to return, how much time does she have. Yes. We're gonna, she's gonna wanna bond with that baby. So I'm answering these questions. It's gathering all the information that it needs. And as a human in the loop, we can review and update any details here to ensure accuracy. So here I've got my, general description of the leave. Here's everything that I'm pulling from the HRIS. I can go ahead and edit if any of this looks off or or different. And then, we generate the assessment. And this is what's gonna tap our HR expert built rules engine, and deliver this trusted leave assessment. So it's gonna tell me exactly what Anna is eligible for, every policy and benefit here, what she's entitled to for each of those policies and benefits. So how much time, what those dates look like, and then indicate what's protected, job, benefits, whether it's paid or unpaid or maybe a wage replacement program. Those pieces that are, critical, what an employee worries about. This is gonna give me some details and instructions for how to administer that leave. I'm also going to get, some call outs, some considerations. Sometimes there's things that require a decision either on you as lead administrator or by the employees. So it's gonna note what those things are so you can, work that out and make adjustments up here based on those decisions. And I get this nice calendar, visual, which can be super helpful when sitting down, with that employee to review. Can clearly see where you're covered with pay, job protection, etcetera. And then finally, what tasks and requirements are involved to process that request compliantly? So it's serving up the notices, the documents, anything involved in in processing this compliantly. What to do, by who, and when. So for any leave scenario, we can immediately assess the eligibility, calculate time, organize it in a clean straightforward way so you can work through it, work through options in planning and constructing that leave plan. And then this button here, you can download this whole assessment report. It looks something like this where, I can sit down with my employee and review this, email it, hand it in person, whatever works best for your process. But one easy to follow clear format, so there's no guessing on either side about what happens next. Alright. Let's look at, another example. So let's I've got one here. So Adam, has requested a day to attend his daughter's dance and music event at at daycare. This one's a little less standard, but with so many state and local laws coming out, and with remote workforces, it's common, more than ever that we might run into a qualifying reason for leave, that we weren't aware of. So we wanna make that easy for you to keep up with all those changes. We're continually adding those new laws, as they come out. So, let's go ahead and work through this one. Let's see. It's going to be, we'll say today. We'll be back tomorrow. Alright. Generate this. And as you can see, there is a law that, covers this qualifying reason. It's also got this company, policy on here and how those two things, work together. So this person is eligible to take this leave. Here are the next steps, and it's a great example of how we layer our company policies in with that rules engine to make that process seamless. And it's very, straightforward and simple to add those. Here in your dashboard, we can upload and pull in all of the rules, all of the requirements for that particular policy. So, you know, is there a minimum length of service? What does it take for this employee to be qualified for that particular policy? If they do qualify, what did they get? I can edit and adjust here. I'm just clicking through to, to show an example, action items. So what do you want to show up in that list, to administer, this afterwards? I can confirm all of this. I can come back and edit, save that policy. And now I know that for the effective dates of that company policy, it will be applied in line with any leave, that gets taken. Alright. So what we just saw is what will be possible with our first iteration of Mitratech Leave. But the best part and the one that I'm most excited for is what we're gonna tackle, soon after we get this, simple evaluation. So, think about those action items that we saw for Angela. I'll go back to that page here. This is quite the list. Most teams handle these manually, and that's an incredible strain on a team, especially when you've got multiple leave cases happening at once. It's also pretty vulnerable to mistakes and and missed deadlines. So one example of where we're headed is that once you figure out a leave plan and what you need to do, one of the very next steps is notifying that employee, sending out the required notices. We're working on, a future where we'll draft those documents for you automatically, write that email, include the relevant attachments and details, and all you need to do is review and press send. And that's just one example, of this direction that we're building in, a world where an AI agent handles the routine so that your team can focus on the human elements. Those features will start to roll out later this year and into next in line, with some broader, compliance capabilities we're tackling across our suite of products. So if this resonates with you, lot of value, in getting in at this stage and and growing with our product. You know, I as I watch you do these demos, Rachel, it it always takes me back to when I used to do this. And, Yes. you know, what I always found, the the most time consuming for me administering leave was really digging into all the different laws and did I miss anything. And then trying to also, as you as you showed with the the company's policies, you know, bringing that into the mix. So, yeah, what a what a game changer this would have been for me, you know, ten years ago, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I don't see oh, I do see, a q and a. So maybe we'll start with that and, jump into our our, q and a portion. So, Angela, what are the top three pitfalls you see when HR or people ops pros encounter, when managing leaves, and how can we prevent those? You know, I think the the the top pitfalls are are really ensuring that you're aware of all the laws that apply where your employees are. You know what I mean? Where your business is, where your employees are. Because that's the biggest potential issue is, you know, oh, this may qualify for FMLA, but then we miss a state or, you know, a local based type of leave law. And, you know, you you show that example of the person that wanted some time off to go attend their child's event. You know, people may not think about the fact that those are sometimes covered in laws. You know, it seems like kind of an easy thing, but there are, you know, there's a lot there that that has to do with it. And then, obviously, the third is the paperwork. You've gotta have that that paperwork, that document trail. You've gotta be sending things out in the required amount of time. You know, those are kind of the the three big hitters, that I would say. I would like to pivot to over to, and thank you all for when you registered. You shared some amazing questions. We we were tickled to see all of those. I'd like to go back to some of those first, and then we'll come back and handle, some of the ones that just came in. So, one of the questions we we received was an employee got hurt outside of work. They were out ten months. Our policy allows for FMLA and two thirty day extensions of leave. Concern over ADA lead us to not release the employee. What's the best practice? And, you know, this is kind of another area where a good technology is is important because, as much as the the person who asked this question is familiar with, you know, where ADA kinda picks up, not everybody's aware of that. You know, HR folks are wearing multiple hats these days. Right? We we don't just get to do leave administration. We're doing a whole lot of other things. So I did wanna share, an answer to that question. You know, exhausting FMLA doesn't necessarily mean that the obligations, end. You know what I mean? When we have to pull in other regulations and rules like ADA. You know, unpaid leave beyond FMLA may be considered a reasonable accommodation. So so definitely something to think about. You know, I would highly recommend avoiding creating handbook policy that automatically terminates an employee at a set period, you know, without some sort of individualized assessment. But that was a really, really awesome question. Another one that we got is and and y'all may find this kind of reminiscent to your own world. I know it was in my world. I live in very rural Pennsylvania. But the question is it's very difficult to get doctor's appointments, which in turn makes following leave timelines next to impossible. If the employee can't work but is waiting for an appointment, should the time waiting be factored into the leave time? And I love this question. It is permissible to begin the leave without that certification if the employee is making a good faith effort to get the appointment scheduled. You may be able to lean on other documentation. Maybe there's some short term disability paperwork there or even the employee's own, representation about the condition, you know, depending on the situation, because it could land in ADA territory. You know, Rachel, we had a couple of similar questions that, although in my world, you just hit the nail on the head. But, a couple of questions that I think you you may wanna to kick out is what's the best way to stay on top of ever changing state and municipal leave laws? Another is, I would love to know if and or how Mitratech could help us manage and track these ever changing state and paid sick leave laws. Absolutely. That's exactly the goal of Mitratech leave is that we can do that heavy lifting for you, and you can focus on those individual cases, those individuals taking leave. And we take that, kind of research and trepidatiousness about, did I catch it all, out of the the situation. So between, Mineral and Mitratech leave, it's a really good combo for staying on top of those things, making sure you don't miss it, miss any, updates, and handling each of those, cases compliantly. Yeah. I love that. I mean, the Mineral platform is chock full of all the things you could possibly imagine, when it comes to leave on a federal state or even local basis because it does get to be a little overwhelming, you know, for that that HR person that's wearing more than one hat or five hats in in, some instances. Absolutely. Let me see. We've got so many great questions. I'm gonna do my best to get through a bunch. If you have a third party vendor for leave and your policy requires the employee to apply for FMLA or ADA through the vendor even if their state has their own leave protection or paid leave, can you deny protection if they do not submit documentation to your vendor? I mean, federal and state laws certainly are going to provide different answers that is not, uncommon at all for you to see. Typically, FMLA regulations, they allow a procedure for routing, you know, request through a vendor. However, if there is an unusual circumstances preventing that employee from following the process that an employer has laid out, then the employer does need to be a little bit flexible. You shouldn't assume that, you know, we'll change their entitlement, to leave. You know, the ADA certainly has stricter, is stricter and state statutory rights are are set by the state and will vary. So my best advice there is please be flexible. There's definitely gonna be situations where an employee can't maybe follow your process to the t and, you know, open the lines of communication with them. Here's another good one. We're under 50 employees, but we give our employees the FMLA benefit as, as that law requires of larger employers. Are we acting within our legal limits? You know, this is also kind of common that we have the FMLA framework, and why not use that as a baseline even though we're not, you know, covered under FMLA because we're under the threshold? It is permissible to voluntarily offer that, like, FMLA style leave. However, to avoid any potential legal issues, it is a good practice to to really state clearly in all the documentation that the company isn't FMLA covered. And don't refer to the leave as FMLA, as FMLA esque, or FMLA ish. You know, you really wanna avoid misrepresenting a company's medical leave policy. Certainly, as always, be sure to review all applicable, state leave and ADA requirements as well. What things need to be considered when writing a leave of absence policy? It really largely depends on which federal, state, and local laws apply in your jurisdiction. And, you know, in general, each unique leave policy should include the purpose and the scope of the leave, when an employee is eligible, how time is accrued and counted, you know, if and when leave the leaves run concurrently with others, whether it's paid or unpaid, the processes for sure for requesting leave and possibly, you know, what to expect returning from leave, how benefits are handled. You know, all of those kind of things are are important to include in a policy. Okay. Let's see. An employee will exhaust FMLA for a major surgery for catastrophic diagnosis at the end of the month. They may be eligible for long term disability, but they are twenty days short of the ninety day elimination period to qualify. Continued leave could cause undue hardship on division that is already struggling due to previous FMLA. What is the risk if we don't approve continued leave under ADA? You you know, the risk is always a claim that, you know, you didn't offer an accommodation that maybe should have been offered, but, you know, that's what that interactive process is really for, figuring these things out, creating documentation of, you know, due diligence. You should go through this even if you think the answer will be no. We can't provide a leave. You know, the ADA isn't, appropriate in situations where the person can't come back to work at all, and it's intended really to accommodate employees in a way that makes them able to work even, you know, if that's at some point in the future. So if the diagnosis is something terminal, they can't come back to work. You know, in the meantime, the ADA is unlikely to be appropriate, but you can't be sure until you, you know, really have that conversation, gather all the facts, you know, in that in that interactive process. See if I can get a couple more in here. I'm in Los Angeles. When were when are we allowed to require employees to use any accrued PTO and or sick time before, California SDI benefits, CFRA, and PDL benefits kick in. Oh, goodness. California is one of those those states, isn't it? There's all kinds of laws, all kinds of different rules. I mean, you know, yeah. California is always always a fun one. And, you know, it can be really confusing. To answer just part of the question, generally, you can't force someone to use their accrued sick leave at all in California. Though you may be able to discipline someone who chooses not to use available sick leave and, you know, it isn't covered by any other protections, which again, you've got several laws there to dig into. It's it's really essential, to work out some of those things. It's it's somewhat unlikely in this scenario, but if, you know, if you are a client of Mineral and you have access to our HR experts, this is kinda nuanced. I really recommend reaching out to our experts to to kinda dig in a little bit deeper. Again, that's what our experts are here for. And and these are the kind of questions that they literally love to to handle and help our clients with. Let's see. One more. What do we do once they've exceeded the twelve weeks of FMLA, but their doctor still has them out? We do hear that question a lot. You know, once FMLA is exhausted, the statutory protections of FMLA may end, but, you know, other legal obligations either under state law or ADA, those might come in. This is where it's important to engage in that interactive process that I mentioned with the employee, find out what the restrictions are, if they have any indication of when they could come back and, you know, in what capacity, determine what determine whether, unpaid leave is an undue hardship or not and, you know, with the help of of any appropriate counsel. We are at the end of our time. Rachel, do you wanna close us out? Yes. That is a wrap. Thank you all so much for spending part of your day with us and for the amazing questions. If there were some in the chat we didn't get to, we will follow-up on those. And thank you, Angela, for sharing your incredible compliance insights. Couple quick housekeeping reminders before we sign off. We'll send the full recording out, of today's session, along with some key takeaways. Again, if you ask a question, we'll get to that. Our team's tracking that. And before you hop off, please take five seconds, answer our quick exit poll on the screen. Let us know what topics you'd like us to cover next. And thanks again for joining. Hope to see you at the next event and have a great rest of your day. Thanks, everyone..