Say you’ve got an employee out on FMLA leave and your office is closed on Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving, do those days count against an employee’s leave entitlement? The answer: It depends.
Regular leave
FMLA leave is calculated in workweek increments. So if an employee is out on regular FMLA leave (not intermittent leave), and would have missed the entire week anyway, the week is counted as a full week of FMLA leave.
Let’s say you have employee X whose ordinary schedule is to work Monday through Friday. If he takes FMLA leave on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the fact that he would have had off for Thursday and Friday doesn’t factor into the FMLA leave calculation. He’s taken a full week of FMLA leave.
Intermittent leave
However, the situation gets trickier if an employee takes FMLA leave in increments of less than a full week.
In that case, the only time holidays can count against the employee’s leave entitlement is if he or she would have been otherwise scheduled to work those days.
Example: If employee Y works on Monday and is out Tuesday and Wednesday on intermittent FMLA and then has Thursday and Friday off as holidays, only Tuesday and Wednesday count against the employee’s leave entitlement.
But because FMLA is measured in weekly increments, and this week only has three days, employee Y has missed 2/3 of the week — instead of 2/5, as taking those two FMLA days would’ve been tallied in an ordinary workweek.
The aforementioned employee X, on the other hand, missed 3/3 of the week (a full week).
Cure for the calculation headache
Of course, once the fractions (2/5, 2/3 of a week) begin to add up, calculating how much leave an employee can be a real headache.
Thankfully, there’s an easier way. You could forget the fractions and calculate everything based on a five-day workweek. So if employee Y misses Tuesday and Wednesday Thanksgiving week, mark him down as missing two days of a full workweek — not 2/3 of a week.
This may lead to an employee getting an extra day or two of FMLA leave, but that’s OK under the law (employees just can’t be shortchanged). Plus, it keeps the calculation headache — not to mention legal risks if a mistake is made — to a minimum.
Source: “FMLA FAQ – How do I calculate FMLA leave around the holidays?” by Bill Pokorny, FMLA Insights, 11/18/10.