The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 provides that, in certain situations, employees have the right to take unpaid leave from their jobs. The FMLA further grants that specified benefits must be made available during this leave and that these employees are entitled to return to their old jobs or an equivalent job once their leave expires. This quickly brings to mind a number of questions:

         - Which employees are eligible for FMLA leave?
         - What benefits must be continued during FMLA leave?
         - When can a job considered “equivalent” to the employee’s old job?

Employers and managers must understand the FMLA in order to handle these issues (and many others) correctly. Failure to handle these issues correctly can be very expensive. The FMLA is enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor and it contains extensive penalty provisions including payment of "double" damages for willful violations as well as payment of the prevailing attorney’s fees. As a result, employers may be facing tens of thousands of dollars in liability for every claim that arises.

In addition, since leave under the FMLA can be taken in the smallest increment of time that the employer tracks (whether minutes, hours, days, weeks or months), an employer or manager simply cannot manage personnel and scheduling without understanding the FMLA. In other words, handling FMLA issues correctly is not only an issue of legal liability, it’s also a business necessity.

With the legal and business stakes this high, you need an expert to train your managers and supervisors. The presenter for 21st Learn’s online FMLA training is Chuck Passaglia. Chuck is an employment law attorney with more than a decade’s experience advising, counseling and representing hundreds of employers in human resources and employment law matters. He has presented over 400 classes, seminars and lectures to employers, non-profit organizations and human resources groups.

21st Learn’s technology will put your users in charge of the presentation with a control panel that works like a DVD player. In addition, our technology offers the ability to track which employees have viewed the presentation. Your employees’ understanding of the material is measured through an online test that is given both before and after the presentation. The results of those tests are also available to you.

Look to 21st Learn to meet your company’s FMLA training needs.