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Seminar Information
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Seminar
Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Time: 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon
Location: The Metropolitan map
Cost: No charge
FMLA is one of the most far-reaching employment law mandates ever enacted – and now, with the new requirements of the National Defense Authorization Act and over 175 pages of sweeping new regulations (that went into effect on January 16, 2009), the FMLA administration landscape has significantly changed.
The new regulations have in some respects strengthened the ability of the employer to ensure that requested FMLA leaves are legitimate – in other respects, the new regulations have added challenging new administrative requirements for employers.
In this seminar, we will take a comprehensive look at how to administer FMLA --
What attendees will learn:
- The number one enduring myth regarding FMLA – how not to fall victim to it, and what it means to your FMLA administration
- Employee eligibility rules
- Qualifying leaves – including the new FMLA leave requirements for families of military personnel
- What the DOL says constitutes a “qualifying exigency” and for what types of military personnel your employees are entitled to take such leaves
- The circumstances under which an employee’s leave to care for an injured or ill family member who is a military servicemember qualifies for FMLA – including what “serious injury or illness” means (it’s different from “serious health condition”), and what the DOL has identified as FMLA-qualifying “next of kin”
- Proper use and administration of completely new and different notification forms (the familiar posted notice and “specific notice” forms are no more, but have been replaced by four new forms!)
- How the regulations affect your administration process with respect to “retroactive” designation of FMLA-qualifying absences
- The new coordination issue between the “leave year” for one of the military leave entitlements and the rest of FMLA that makes calculating the maximum FMLA entitlement a tough challenge
- New regulatory clarifications in the “absence plus treatment” and “chronic condition” prongs of the serious health condition definition
- A key new regulatory development regarding job restoration rights and “light-duty” job assignments that will require careful analysis of future staffing requirements
- Coordination issues with FMLA and various state-mandated leave entitlements
- Handling the challenges of intermittent leave administration
- How the new regulations make it much more difficult to determine the maximum intermittent leave entitlement for employees with a variable work schedule
- Handling the concurrency of FMLA and employer-paid leave benefits
- A significant change in DOL position on the coordination of workers’ compensation and disability payments with employer benefits such as PTO, vacation and sick leave
- The DOL’s new rule on “perfect attendance” bonuses
- Why it is likely that you will need to get forms translations done
- Proper use and administration of the now four new certification forms
- The new process for dealing with incomplete or insufficient certifications
- New rules for authenticating and clarifying certifications
- What an “Invitational Travel Order” and an “Invitational Travel Authorization” are and why you need to know
- Why the new regulations make having updated job descriptions extremely important
- New rules for obtaining fitness-for-duty certifications
- Benefit maintenance and job reinstatement requirements
As with all of our compliance programs, this seminar will focus on real-life, practical application issues, and not legal minutiae. Our goal is for participants to understand how to comply and be able to immediately apply what is learned. Attendees will receive a seminar manual and compliance reference that includes comprehensive cross-referencing to regulations, and key Internet links to other resources. It is not only a great learning tool during the seminar, but is also a tremendously valuable working resource back at the office.
For more information, please e-mail academy@acclaimbenefits.com or call 763.278.4620.