Maternity Leave
Transition: How to Work Part-time Under FMLA
Here's good news you won't find on the FMLA
poster at your workplace:
Under FMLA, you may be able to take your initial six
weeks of full-time-off maternity leave, then follow it
with a temporary part-time schedule before you
return to a full-time schedule.
You could call it your customized phase-back-to-work
plan. Others have done it. How can you do it, too?
Read on.
A Creative Work/Family
Balance Solution
Like many new moms with a full-time job, you may find
the standard (USA) maternity leave of six weeks to be
painfully short.
Even though you may qualify for 12 weeks of leave under
the (US) Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA), your
household budget or employer pressure may compel your
return to work after only six weeks of leave.
Maybe you'd like a better-paced maternity leave. How
about six full weeks off, then a transition period of
working part-time hours, then back to full-time. Is that
option possible? Yes!
Time with Your Baby
without Total Loss of Income
Reduced leave schedule is a little-known
provision of FMLA that may allow you to follow your
maternity leave with a temporary part-time schedule.
This allows you to retain partial earnings even
as you enjoy more time to bond with your baby.
Besides the emotional benefits, a transitional approach
makes it easier to continue breastfeeding and to
fine-tune your work/family balance strategies.
How to Create a
Phase-Back-to-Work Plan
FMLA's reduced leave schedule is not only little-known,
it is hardly publicized. So, until now, you probably
didn't know about this creative approach to maternity
leave.
Here's how it works:
Start by converting the 12 weeks of allowed FMLA leave
into its equivalent in hours: 480 hours of leave
available (that is, 40 hours for each week).
Then, figure the number of remaining hours available for
flexing into a temporary part-time schedule after your
maternity leave is over.
Let's look at an example.
After her six weeks (240 hours) of maternity leave,
Amy had 240 hours of FMLA leave remaining.
Using FMLA's reduced leave schedule
provision, she negotiated to work three days per week
during her initial four weeks back to work.
In other words, she took two days of leave per week for
four weeks, using up 64 hours of her 240 remaining
allowed leave hours.
Then, she worked four days per week and took one day of
leave in each of the next 22 weeks (8 hours per week x
22 weeks = 176 more hours used). With her 240 remaining
hours used up, she then resumed her full-time schedule.
There you have it—a phase-back-to-work arrangement after
maternity leave under FMLA.
How Can You Get a
Similar Arrangement?
Remember, even if you qualify for 480 hours of family
leave under FMLA, once any (if any) employer-paid leave
is used up, the remainder of the allowed weeks (or
hours) is generally unpaid, and you would not be
eligible for unemployment compensation during this time.
So...
...while you may be unable to afford lengthy unpaid time
off, by flexing your unused hours after maternity leave
into a reduced leave (part-time) schedule, you
can enjoy more time with your baby as you resume earning
part of your pay.
So, how do you pull it off?
To use this provision of FMLA, you must first get
your employer's agreement if medical necessity is
not a factor, as is often the case in the period
after the six weeks of post-birth maternity (medical)
leave.
Quoting from the U.S. Department of Labor at
http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/fmla/er3.asp:
In order to take leave intermittently or on a
reduced leave schedule after the birth of a child or
the placement of a child for adoption or foster care,
the employee must have the employer's agreement.
How Do You Get Your
Employer's Agreement?
Thousands of moms before you have received approval of a
family-friendly arrangement by using WorkOptions.com's
Flex Success
proposal template to create a professionally-crafted,
persuasive document to present to their manager.
I've known for a while now
that I've wanted to approach my boss about a 4-day
work week [after my return from maternity leave] but
didn't feel I knew where to begin with my approach.
And the following month...
Dear Pat, Just wanted to share
the good news that my proposal was accepted...your
website and Flex Success plan were a huge
help. Karen Montagne, Vice President,
U.S.-Russia Business Council, Washington, D.C.
Why do working moms use the
Flex Success proposal template?
Because the time-proven way to get approval of a
flexible work arrangement is to present a written
proposal to your immediate manager, and
Flex Success has
delivered positive outcomes for more than a decade.
It must address not only your part-time scheduling
needs, but also your employer's bottom-line interests.
As a result of using
Flex Success, I was granted permission to work
from home for six weeks following my maternity
leave...Your Flex Success format was great
because it focused on deliverables for my company
and helped me articulate the advantages for them
rather than me. That is the reason that I won
approval. Thank you. Erika Chandler, North
Carolina
Flex Success is a
fast (download it) and easy (simply tailor it to your
specific job with custom insertions), proposal template and planning guide for getting
approval of your individual part-time hours request at
your current job.
Get more details.
Positioning and
Presentation Help You Get Acceptance of Your Proposal
When it's time to present your proposal, be sure to
position the phase-back arrangement in a positive light.
For a scripted paragraph presenting intermittent
leave, see Return to Work: Transition Phase found in Max Maternity Leave,
available for instant download here.
Even if you're not eligible for leave under FMLA, you
may want to develop a proposal for a similar approach to
your maternity leave anyway.
In any case, it's a good idea to package your
phase-back, reduced leave schedule proposal as the final
issue of discussion of your overall maternity leave
work-coverage plan, as presented in
Max Maternity Leave.
Make Plans Now to Flex
Your Maternity Leave
Look forward to more precious moments with your new baby
when you flex your maternity leave.
I purchased Flex Success
and was brought back [from maternity leave] on a
reduced schedule of 20 hours, 15 from
home!...Without the use of such a user-friendly
template and written advice, I don't think I could
have been granted such a flexible arrangement
tailored to my family's needs. Natasha
Colonero, Accounting Department, Abbott Bioresearch,
Shrewsbury, MA
I'm unable to
respond to FMLA queries.
Please visit the links below.
Thank you.
Federal vs. State Family &
Medical Leave Laws
FMLA Benefits
Learn more about Flex
Success or to get started now...
Order
and download Flex Success now.
|
