It’s a lot of acronyms, and even when you know what they stand for, it’s still confusing. You’d think that when someone is sick and can’t come into work, that’d be the end of it. But nope. There are real differences between FMLA, PFML, and sick leave, and they all have different criteria. How is a health or dental practice owner supposed to keep them all straight? We asked Sarah McCormick, HR for Health’s HR Client Services Manager, to help clear up this confusion.
First, can you explain FMLA?
FMLA stands for the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. Basically, FMLA is job protected medical leave that employees can take if their employer has 50 or more employees, if the employee has worked with the practice for at least 12 months, and if they have worked at least 1,250 hours in the last 12 months.
Then once they meet those eligibility criteria, then they can take up to 12 weeks of job protected leave for certain eligible reasons, such as taking care of a sick family member or for their own medical reasons.
FMLA really only applies to the job protections at the practice, and not applying for it through the state or anything like that. A lot of HR for Health clients have fewer employees than FMLA requires, so it may not apply to everyone. But keep in mind that even if you don’t have 50 or more employees, a lot of states have leave requirements that are specific to their area that apply to fewer employees.
What is PFML?
Paid family and medical leave, or PFML, is where certain states will offer a type of paid leave where it could include job protections. But not always. The majority of the time, it’s going to just be wage reimbursements through the state. Employees and employers usually pay taxes into this already. An employee can request wage reimbursement through the state when they go on some sort of family leave.
Usually, paid family medical leave runs concurrently with FMLA. So PFML is basically just wage reimbursement for the time that they’re actually on that job-protected medical leave.
How is this different from state sick leave?
State sick leave applies to a wider variety of things that you can use it for. You can really use it on an everyday basis, rather than if you have a serious medical condition or if your family member has a serious medical condition. It’s more like, “Oh I need to call out sick one day” or something like that.
A lot of states will have that paid sick leave requirement. How it interacts with those other leaves is that if you have paid sick leave accrued to use, you can use it during your job-protected family leave to get wages from your employer. But usually sick leave is limited to approximately a week. Most employers wouldn’t give much more than that. Sick leave is usually a shorter term wage reimbursement directly through an employer because it’s mandatory in some states.
Does every state have these laws?
Not every state has them, no. But every state has FMLA. I will say that these policies are becoming more prevalent because I think that employers want to be more competitive. So even in states that don’t require these leaves, a lot of the time we do see HR for Health clients offering them just because it does make them more competitive. But I think mainly the states on the coasts like California, Oregon, Washington, New York are the ones that typically have FMLA, PFML, and sick leave all together.
What if a practice has locations in multiple states, and one of those states has paid sick leave or PFML laws?
That’s a great question. This actually came up recently with an HR for Health client. Basically, the leave and the labor laws apply to whatever state the employee is physically working in.
So, for example, if you have a practice in Washington, but your employee commutes from Oregon to Washington to work, then because they’re physically working in Washington, only the Washington leave law would apply. That’s where they’re paying taxes to the paid family leave program.
Sometimes practices have an employee who works in multiple states. Then it gets a little bit more complicated and they have to follow what they call place of performance laws. An employee working in multiple states may be paying wages and taxes into multiple states.
Essentially, if you’re contributing towards a leave program, you’re probably eligible for it.
Why is offering sick leave so important for health and dental practices, specifically?
I mean, a lot of the time it’s legally mandated, so you have to offer it to be compliant! But in addition to that, I think that sick leave is really important because it really helps the employer be competitive. And also, it helps with the safety of other employees and patients. When you give employees time off without having to be concerned about not getting paid or feeling like they have to come into work on a day when they’re actually sick, it really benefits everyone. They’ll have that security. And they’re not going to be coming in coughing all over everyone and getting the rest of the practice sick!
I just think sick leave is important for so many reasons like mental health, physical health, and even public health.
What is the one thing you want all practice owners to know about FMLA, PFML, and sick leave?
Honestly, the leaves are really complicated and I totally get that. I think that especially in states that have multiple different types of leave like California when there’s like paid family leave, disability leave, regular sick leave, CFRA… There’s all of these different leaves and I think it can get difficult to understand how they coordinate with each other.
That’s why I think it is important to research it, look at your handbook policies and make sure they match state and federal law. Understand that each leave has a different eligibility criteria, as well as criteria for what documents you even have to provide an employee when they’re going on that type of leave.
Is there a good way to keep track of it all?
Definitely! HR for Health is a great way to keep track of FMLA, PFML, and sick leave. I mean, there’s so many different features on our portal that would help with that. We offer a lot of templates for the documentation that you need to provide to your employees when they go on this leave, and then of course there’s time off tracking. If employees need to request things like sick leave and you need to track accruals, it’s on there. We also have the scheduler feature where you can see it at a calendar level, too.
Got more questions for our HR team? We’ve got answers!
