State Family and Medical Leave + PTO?

Requests
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1

Hi! I have a question regarding state FMLA —

My organization is fully remote, with 40+ staff spread across 18 states, and are looking into integrating using state-specific paid leaves with our own PTO policies. Do folks at other remote organizations do this and if so, would you be willing to share your policies and/or any tips? I’ve heard that the most common use is utilizing state/local leave first and then “topping off” with org PTO, but wanted to hear how you all approach this!

Thanks in advance! - Kim

2

Hi Kim! Yes we do this, where staff are taking more than 2 weeks of leave at a time, we ask them to apply for any relevant state leave and/or short-term disability where they may be eligible, and we then top up to full pay with sick leave or PTO, whichever is applicable. The applications usually need to be made by the employee themself and they then supply the details to us of what they receive for our calculations of the true-up. We have not found a more equitable way than this so far (we have staff in approx 14 states) but I would be curious to hear how others are handling this. Hope that helps! - Naomi

3

Thanks so much, Naomi! This is so helpful, and so far also seems like the most equitable way to roll this out. I have a couple of follow up questions, if you’re able to answer:

  • How has doing calculations and tracking PTO internally been for you? I’ve heard from some folks that internal tracking has been the trickiest and most time consuming part, so any tips would be welcome!
  • We have some folks in states where there are is no paid leave. Did you run into this when rolling out your policy and if so, how did you acknowledge this with the team?
4

For sure! Yes the tracking has been a bit time-consuming although it has been a colleague of mine who has done most all of the heavy lifting there. She has set up a template to gather the necessary info each time and I think having that consistent process is most important to make it more streamlined and step-by-step. We also do a final true-up at the end of the leave to make sure that everything balances and to make any final payroll adjustments needed.

We also have a few folks in states with no paid leave (although not too many these days) and in those cases we would pay a higher proportion of the person’s regular wage to get to “full pay” as there is no state leave to offset that - the person would still receive their full wage for the period of leave, minus the amount of any disability payments received. Hope that helps! - Naomi