April 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 38

MANAGING MANAGEMENT

fer an FMLA situation to your HR
department, the sooner they can
take over the details, qualifications
and steps. The things that are critical for you to know are the things
that come up between you and your
employee long before the situation
reaches HR.
Routine Sick Days or FMLA?
Unfortunately, there's no simple formula to answer that - the devil's
in the details. Some employees are
more than happy to give you all the
unpleasant details of their ailment
while others will just request the day
off and mark it " sick. " If their situation qualifies for FMLA, however,
then they are entitled to its protections even if they didn't ask for it,
want it or know it existed.
Suspicion = Obligation
It's a common misconception that
employees have to formally request
FMLA in writing in order to trigger
the employer's obligation to take
the appropriate steps. Not true. If
your employee requests some time
off to deal with a medical issue for
either themself or a family member, they don't even need to know
the letters " FMLA " for your obligations to be triggered. The employee need only mention a qualifying
condition for you to have a duty to
investigate.
While the legal requirements
should be sufficient motivation, according to the employee medical
management experts at Care Works
USA, " If a supervisor has knowledge
of a serious health condition, FMLA
request or a potential FMLA qualifying event and does not take active
measures to pass that information
along to the appropriate party (in
most cases, HR), the supervisor can
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be held personally liable for damages.
(Shultz v. Advocate Health & Hospitals
Corp.) " That's right, personal liability,
not just the employer's.
The Sky is Falling.... The Sky is
Falling....
Of course, you don't want to seem
like a Chicken Little, discussing
FMLA at every sneeze, cough or
time-off request, so before you put
on your Sherlock Holmes hat, ask
yourself:
Has the employee met the 12
months/1250 hours requirement?
Has the employee missed three or
more days for what seems to be related reasons?
If the answer is " no " to the first
question, then FMLA is not going
to apply. If it is " yes " to the first but
" no " to the second, the employee is
eligible but it's unlikely that the situation is. If you answered " yes " to
both, then you'll want to get a little
more information to determine if
the situation could fall under FMLA
before connecting the employee
with HR.
TMI: Too Much Information
You need to ask questions that will
help you to identify if FMLA might
apply, but you don't want to ask
questions that cross a line into confidential health information (protected by HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act), which could put yourself and
the organization at risk. You don't
want to cut the employee off from
sharing his or her deeply personal
medical situation (you are genuinely concerned, after all) and come
off as uncaring or dismissive, but it
will be much easier to avoid breaching confidentiality and accidentally
disclosing protected information if

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you don't actually have that information. And when others ask you
(and they will ask you), " What's
wrong with Paula?, " you need to
have a safe but nonevasive answer.
Perhaps something like, " Well, I'll
let Paula share the details, but what
I can tell you is that we're going to
have to shift some things around for
a few weeks, and I could use your
help figuring out what that might
look like " will send the right message.
FAQ: Functionally Asked Questions
" Steer clear of questions pertaining to the condition or specific
reason someone is taking leave, "
advises Care Works USA. " It is
not advisable to ask what is wrong
with an employee, or what they are
seeing their doctor for. " It's better
to stick to more functional questions like, How much time do you
expect to miss? What initiatives are
you most concerned will be impacted?
Are there things that only you do that
others should get trained on? Staying
focused on the information you'll
need to keep things running will
help you avoid missteps into personal information that land you in
hot legal soup.
Soup Scrabble
There is a long list of Scrabble tiles
(i.e., regulations and employment
laws) that could be floating in that
steamy workplace soup instead of,
or in combination with, FMLA
when you have an employee with
a medical condition that impacts
the workplace. Don't let yourself
get burned by ignoring the cues that
there's more to the story.
Lauren Yost is NRPA's Vice President of
Operations (lyost@nrpa.org).

April 2014 - Parks & Recreation

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