They say that numbers don’t lie, but they sometimes don’t tell the whole story. Unless your organization can access all your data, you might be missing critical information that reveals the true story of your employees’ Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave.
Workpartners® provides a holistic view of employee absence data, allowing employers to understand the complete picture of what is happening and take appropriate action.
Problem
In 2024, a large transit client of ours noticed unusual patterns in their FMLA claims compared to the year before. The number of employees filing for FMLA increased by 25 percent in just two years, but the average duration of continuous leave decreased by more than 10 percent. Further confusing the matter was that, while the number of continuous leaves decreased by 13 percent, the number of intermittent leaves increased by 8.1 percent.
Why were more employees requesting leave but using fewer days?
The most significant increase in approved leaves was among employees seeking time off to address their own health conditions. (This is the most common reason for FMLA leave.) Workpartners analyzed the percentage of this client’s denied FMLA requests and found that the agency had a much lower rate of denial (7.6 percent) than our benchmark for similar transit companies (19.0 percent).
The transit client wanted to learn why it was seeing such a rapid increase in FMLA claims without a commensurate rise in lost workdays. The client also wanted to know if employees were not using leave correctly and if staff were not reviewing and approving leaves properly.
Solution
To address these issues, Workpartners provided a series of recommendations to help the client better understand and manage their employees’ FMLA requests.
- We suggested using our advanced analytics to identify trends among the client’s “at-risk” employees. We reviewed their FMLA usage against their own and their covered family members’ health care provider guidelines.
- Our Absence Monitor tool provided real-time notifications on employee call-offs and notified managers when an employee contacted Workpartners to report an intermittent time-off request. This helped leadership track which employees were out on leave, learn the circumstances around the leave, and identify any immediate issues. As an example, Workpartners analyzed our clients’ workforce absence data and provided insights to suggest which portion of their workforce was using intermittent time outside of what they should be using it for.
- Integrating our Online Business Intelligence® (O|BI) platform into the transit client’s data analytics allowed the organization to track the reasons employees took leave, the details of each claim’s approval, and trends occurring within departments or the workforce as a whole. We also helped build reports to monitor employees with two or more approved FMLAs, plus customized reports for subsets of employees who were taking leaves that might be outliers compared to internal and external benchmarks.
Results
Workpartners implemented a new frequency and duration surveillance process in June 2024, creating an automated way for the client to review cases where employees’ intermittent FMLA use occurred outside the frequency or duration for that incident.
The process produced insightful, actionable data. The information led to a dramatic increase in recertification requests, as well as more suspended leaves for those deemed to be outside the required parameters.
In addition, automated warning letters were sent to employees who may have exceeded the client’s approved FMLA use. This allowed the agency to proactively address potential problems and inform employees that leaves would not be approved if they did not follow established policies and procedures.
Call at 1-866-229-3507 or email info@workpartners.com to schedule a meeting with the Workpartners Sales team. You can learn more about our integrated analytics and absence management programs, as well as the real-time benchmarking and integrated reporting that are available through our integrated analytics platform.