Off work due to car accident

Bullion

We are a non-profit organization that does not qualify for FMLA. We have an employee with two years of services who was involved in a car accident and has been off work two months. She has an important position with our organization and it has been a huge hardship on us getting her work completed. Her Doctors continue to push the RTW date back two weeks at a time. The employee states that she does want to return to work.

We would like to hire a replacement. How long should we keep this job available?

hr92175

I just had a similar situation. The employee was on leave for depression for 6 weeks but was not eligible for FMLA since he had only been employed for 8months. We spoke with an attorney and told the employee that we could not keep him on an indefinite leave of absence due to business necessity.

Are you required to comply with ADA? If so, please check with an attorney because the person could be covered under the act depending on her situation.

njjel

Do you have a policy that covers leaves of absence? If so go by that. If not, I would think that if she is a valued employee, you would want to retain her and hire a temporary employee for at least the length of FMLA leave (even though you aren't required to do so). If she isn't a valued employee, and you have no leave policy and haven't granted leave beyond this time frame to any one else in the past, then you could let her go.