12 months

hrjax

If a person was hired 1/16/03, their eligibility date for FMLA would be 1/16/04 (providing the 1250 hours is met).

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for any "lead time" for eligibility? I've had several people ask me about FMLA and they are 30 days away from their effective date. Do you allow them to use FMLA if they are in a 30 day window of eligibility?

POPEYE

NO. If you start to allow 30 days, then someone will want 40 then 50 then.......

Just had a similiar incident with an EE that was 22 days away from entitlement. We did get all of the certification in place, allowed them to take Personal Leave per company policy until FMLA officially kicked in.

Don D

I can't understand why you would want to even consider granting what you term 'lead time'. The law sets the time at 12 months. As with all programs administered in Human Resources, we carefully observe the parameters of the policies and laws. If your policy is to allow employees to join the group insurance plan at day 30, would you then allow them to join 5 days shy of that date?

Betty I_O

We also had an incident with an employee seven days shy of the one year. We allowed them to take some vacation and personal time to cover the intervening days, but would not budge on the FMLA
eligibility. Once you compromise, you've set a precedent (and you can be sure other employees will hear about it), which can open the proverbial "Pandora's Box." Don't put yourself in that position; stay with the FMLA rules.

marc

We do not budge on the anniversary date either, but we do have a leave of absence policy that has been used to bridge the gap. The ee has to pay all insurance etc. until the FML kicks in, but it has worked in a couple of those near anniversary situation. This policy has to be consistently avaiable to all employees and can have the net effect of granting more than 12 weeks leave, so you have to carefully consider the ramifications before using it.