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Q&A

What’s the best way to legally limit the length of leaves of absences?

02/02/2009

Q. How do we handle an employee who is on an indefinite leave of absence and does not know when he will be able to return to work?

What should we do? Employee wants a transfer as a reasonable accommodation

02/02/2009

Q. One of our employees recently developed a condition that makes it difficult for her to perform the essential functions of her job. She has asked to be transferred to a job she can perform. Are we obligated to do this?

Driving on company business: Who’s liable?

01/16/2009

Q. Say an employee driving his own car on company business to make a bank deposit gets into an accident and is slightly injured. Is it his responsibility to go to his own doctor to seek immediate treatment and then to the workers’ comp doctors? And who covers the damage to the car?

Can we set different sick policies for different offices?

01/16/2009

Q. We have two offices in two different states. In one office, we have a sick leave policy in place because we have exempt employees, and the FLSA requires us to have the policy if we want to dock exempt employees for sick time after they exhaust their sick days. All employees at the second office are hourly, and they rarely call in sick. Can we have a policy at one location and not at another?

Are we required to send job-offer letters?

01/16/2009

Q. Are we required to give applicants official offer letters? What does a letter have to spell out?

Can we require scheduling FMLA-covered medical appointments to suit our needs?

01/13/2009

Q. One of our employees is taking intermittent FMLA leave for planned medical treatment. However, the employee’s appointments occur during work hours, and that has started to have a serious adverse impact on our customer service function. Can we require the employee to schedule medical visits better to address these problems?

How do we handle FMLA leave when the time off is less than our usual minimum?

01/13/2009

Q. An employee has asked for paid FMLA leave for an increment of time that is less than the increment allowed under our company’s paid leave policy. Can the employee be required to take the larger paid leave increment to substitute any accrued paid leave for unpaid FMLA leave?

Must we reinstate health insurance that lapsed while employee was on FMLA leave?

01/13/2009

Q. Our company allowed an employee’s health insurance to lapse because he failed to pay his share of the premium while on FMLA leave. The employee is scheduled to return to work in two weeks. What is the company required to do about the employee’s health insurance coverage when he returns?

Can we have an English-only rule?

01/13/2009

Q. Is it OK for our company to prohibit employees from speaking in languages other than English in front of our customers?

Can we terminate now an employee who we know can’t return from FMLA leave?

01/13/2009

Q. We have an employee out on FMLA leave and have just learned that she will not be able to return to work when her FMLA entitlement expires. Should we go ahead and send her a termination notice now?