Remember, over the Summer, when I blogged about how sending FMLA paperwork to an employee via first class mail is a big mistake.
Why? Because if the employee claims not to have received the paperwork, then you have no proof of delivery, and possible FMLA interference issues if the employee is somehow precluded from taking FMLA leave.
So, I offered three alternatives:
Trial is over!
I’m coming atcha live and direct from the bloggerdome with a sweet defense verdict in my pocket. Yup, yup!
And what do I come back to? A precedential Third Circuit opinion discussing an employee’s right to return to work from FMLA.
I’ll cover that for you after the jump…
Really. It’s a bad idea.
Like my youngest son using chopsticks and a fork at the same time to eat pho.
Ok, not that bad. But, definitely blogworthy.
More on this HR lesson after the jump…
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
But, if you send FMLA paperwork to an employee by first class mail, then you’re asking for trouble.
I’ll show you why after the jump…
How many times has an employee provided you with an incomplete Family and Medical Leave Act certification? Oh, I don’t know, maybe a missing return date…
If the FMLA leave is foreseeable, then the employee must provide the employer with the anticipated timing and duration of the leave. However, where the FMLA leave is unforeseeable — think, car crash — then that information can wait if the employee herself doesn’t know her return date.
But that doesn’t mean you — yeah, you employer — should let it go.
Folks, I get the feeling you may be inundated with extra blog posts over the next few days.
That is, I’m punching this post out from the airport, as I await my flight to Orlando, where I’ll be attending the Gathering of the Juggalos 2014 SHRM Annual Conference and Expo.
Two speaking gigs for me and lot of other conference time to listen, learn, and blog.
And by coffee, I mean turkey legs and frozen blueberry-mango rum lemonade.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down…
You see that badge over there? You know what I had to do to get that badge?Buy the full version of Photoshop Spike the Kool-Aid of everyone on the SHRM Annual Conference Speaker Selection Committee
I beat out thousands (trillions?) of other speaker submissions to be selected as a SHRM 2014 Annual Conference & Exposition speaker.
Now, before I get to the FMLA, let me talk about another recent decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court. On Monday, the high court ruled (here) that:
- Claims asserted under the “improper quality of patient care” provision of New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act “must be premised upon a reasonable belief that the employer has violated a law, rule, regulation, declaratory ruling adopted pursuant to law, or a professional code of ethics that governs the employer and differentiates between acceptable and unacceptable conduct in the employer’s delivery of patient care.”
- A plaintiff asserting that his or her employer’s conduct is incompatible with a “clear mandate of public policy concerning the public health” must, at a minimum, identify authority that applies to the “activity, policy or practice” of the employer.
In two weeks, at the SHRM Annual Conference, I’ll be presenting “Meeting the Challenges That Leaves of Absence and Attendance Issues Present Under the FMLA and ADA.”
The good news is that I have 75 minutes of HR greatness planned for my SHRM sesh. The bad news is that my presentation is at 7:00 AM on the day after the #SHRM14 Social Bash at the Hard Rock Cafe.
So, let’s just say “Hey, thanks a lot, SHRM!” that I anticipate an intimate gathering of HR hardcore FMLA/ADAthletes for my spiel.
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