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personal leave
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Before becoming eligible for FML, our employees have available a personal leave pollcy that can be used to cover short-term illnesses. The total eligibility for such leave in the 1st year of employmen
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personal leave
posted at 9/16/2012 11:53 PM EDT
on Workforce Management
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Posts: 7
First: 12/8/2011 Last: 12/9/2012 |
Before becoming eligible for FML, our employees have available a personal leave pollcy that can be used to cover short-term illnesses. The total eligibility for such leave in the 1st year of employment is 30 days. Recently an employee had a heart attack and by-pass surgery which would have kept him off work for several months. He was covered by our medical insurance and had enrolled in our 26-week short term disability plan. Following the dictates of our leave plan, when his 30-day leave entitled expired, he was released from employment and his medical insurance was dropped immediately. Med-wise, his only option is COBRA. This was all done per co. policy. In about 40 years of HR work, I've never experienced this kind of callousness. As a business we've been open for a year and of course want to reman union-free, but the damage done to our employee relations was very deep and more actions like this are not going to go down well at all. Is this type of treatment more common than I thought? I have had serious charges leveled against me by our corp office for generally not being supportive of policy due to my criticisms and requests for more human revisions, so as to mitigate the damage this kind of thing will have on future employee relations. Am I nuts here or is this a more typical type of leave policy than I have ever been aware of? |
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Re: personal leave
posted at 9/17/2012 9:08 AM EDT
on Workforce Management
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Posts: 147
First: 9/21/2011 Last: 2/12/2013 |
That is exactly our leave policy for non-FMLA leaves. What we have though is STD/LTD programs in place to help replace the income lost. I don't see this as callous as ours is well documented in our employee handbook....especially because this is a very short term employee who hasn't even made a year with the company. I am not sure where our society has jumped the line that the employer is responsible for an employee's well being for any reason at any time and "callous" if we aren't "generous" based on the employees' definitions. Not every company can afford to be "generous" especially in these tough economic times. That's why it is important to remind employees of the importance of benefits such as STD/LTD and personal savings. STD/LTD payments continue even if the employment has been terminated. I just don't know many employers who can afford to keep paying either wages or benefits for employees who are out for significant periods of time through no fault of the employer. |
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Re: personal leave
posted at 9/18/2012 11:39 AM EDT
on Workforce Management
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Posts: 174
First: 9/20/2011 Last: 2/11/2013 |
In Response to personal leave: Before becoming eligible for FML, our employees have available a personal leave pollcy that can be used to cover short-term illnesses. The total eligibility for such leave in the 1st year of employment is 30 days. Recently an employee had a heart attack and by-pass surgery which would have kept him off work for several months. He was covered by our medical insurance and had enrolled in our 26-week short term disability plan. Following the dictates of our leave plan, when his 30-day leave entitled expired, he was released from employment and his medical insurance was dropped immediately. Med-wise, his only option is COBRA. This was all done per co. policy. In about 40 years of HR work, I've never experienced this kind of callousness. As a business we've been open for a year and of course want to reman union-free, but the damage done to our employee relations was very deep and more actions like this are not going to go down well at all. Is this type of treatment more common than I thought? I have had serious charges leveled against me by our corp office for generally not being supportive of policy due to my criticisms and requests for more human revisions, so as to mitigate the damage this kind of thing will have on future employee relations. Am I nuts here or is this a more typical type of leave policy than I have ever been aware of? Posted by pmast7 I would not say your are nuts, just not realistic. Do you feel it is reasonable that an employer should have an unlimited obligation to an employee for health and income? Assuming your answer is no then boundaries must be drawn. We can debate where those lines are, but there must be lines. These risks can be insured (if an employer chooses to do so) through disability coverage for income. With regard to the Health insurance obligation, the first question is the prognosis of the disability. If there is no likelihood of return to work at anywhere near the same level of skills, then what should the employer do? Average annual cost of health care is $16,000 per year for a family and rising. Should the employer take this on? In the case you descibed it implied that the person might be able to return to work in less than one year. In the past this was the dividing line we used at the companies I worked in. We would put the person on unpaid leave of absence, continue the benefits during this period, (the employee would continue to pay his share of the costs) and STD/LTD would provide some income. If there was no likelihood of the person returning within a year, we separated them from employment once they qualified for LTD. We let the insurance "tell" us that he/she was not coming back. This is financially very tough on the family and we understand this but where do you suggest we draw the line? Most companies just cannot afford this ongoing obligation. If you lay people off what do you do about the ongoing medical costs? Pick up any part of the COBRA payments? If yes, you could suggest a policy whereby you might do the same under these conditions. I believe COBRA lasts for 36 months if totally disabled. |
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