Happy New Year, everybody.

I saw an earlier post where somebody was considering doing this. Anybody out there using LP to "track" FMLA? We have a request from HR for us to "show them what Lawson can do" - but they haven't said yet what they want it to do. What, exactly, does it mean to "track FMLA"? I know a little, but not enough to show anybody what Lawson does or what needs to be done. Any feedback appreciated.

-GW

Hi GW,
Whew, can see you've been read a few times, but no one's wanted to talk about FMLA tracking --

Everybody wants to "track FMLA", but I haven't seen a pkg yet that can really do it. I worked in HR for many years (yes, I escaped and have lived to tell the tale), and we looked at a number of different products, which are nice and shiny but can't eliminate the need for human intervention. What folks seem to want is a system that can automatically and intuitively decriment the fed- or state-granted leave allotment (often 12 weeks) as employees take leave . If the FMLA was that simple to administer, almost any system could do this -- but FMLA is not simple.

If an employee takes a leave for X weeks and returns to work on his/her regular schedule, then that leave under FMLA is simple.

If an employee needs to be absent from work for medical reasons on an intermittent basis, then FMLA becomes complex. The employee's time away from work needs to be tracked and applied against the granted leave allotment. How to track the time away from work? Not necessarily a simple task. Ideally, the employee would record the time correctly, and the manager would review it and approve it. In my experience about 30% of managers 'get' FMLA, and HR/Benefits is always having to chase them down to learn how much leave an employee used in any given pay period.

Even if the employee/manager did record the time correctly, the systems I've seen don't have an interface from the time system to the absence system to buy down the leave allotment. Someone has to go into the absence system and (gasp!) make an entry.

Absence mgmt systems all seem to have nice functionality to produce the forms needed to administer FMLA. They don't, however, replace the need for an HR person to sit with the employee, gather information, make decisions, and have an ongoing communication with that employee. Unless and until someone can create software to do that, I don't know that most HR folks will be happy with how our systems 'track FMLA.'

Hope this helps -- :blink:

Lauren

Thanks, Lauren. That helps.

I'm hoping somebody out there is using LP to at least do something with the FMLA allotment. LP was touted as being able to handle it - whatever "it" is.

-GW

1) To engourage employees to report time used toward FMLA we simply communicated to the employee that intermitant missed time that should be applied to their FMLA balance needs to be reported to insure that no displinary action is taken for excessive absence from work. That seemed to get the job done on having it reported.
2) Once the hours are reported in your time keeping system then LP will calculated the hours used for FMLA and you can run a report that shows the hours used.
3) You need to confirm with your HR staff if they use a calendar year or a fiscal year as well as if they have a rolling year. System set-up using a rolling year can be difficult if not impossible because you can role forward or backwards 3 months.

Good luck!