If you have employees who live in Georgia, you may be curious about whether they’re covered by a state-specific family and medical leave act, or FMLA. Georgia maintains no state-specific paid or unpaid family leave laws similar to the FMLA.
In the absence of a state-specific family or medical leave statute, Georgia employers will need to devote most of their attention to the federal FMLA. That’s exactly what we’ll discuss in this article. We’ll cover how the FMLA defines employer coverage, employee eligibility, qualifying reasons, and more.
Does Georgia Have Its Own Family and Medical Leave Act?
As an employer, it’s important to investigate whether your employees are covered by state-specific leave laws. States like Washington, Minnesota, and Massachusetts have laws that provide paid family and medical leave. But Georgia does not maintain a Georgia-specific FMLA separate from the federal statute.
Without a state-mandated leave program, employees in Georgia must look to the federal FMLA for family and medical leave.
Who Is a Covered Employer Under the FMLA in Georgia?
In Georgia and the rest of the United States, employer coverage under the FMLA is determined by a few simple rules. Organizations are covered by the FMLA if they employ 50 or more employees in 20 or more workweeks in either the current calendar year or the previous calendar year.
The FMLA also covers federal, state, and local government employers regardless of how many people they employ. Local educational agencies (think public and private schools) fall under the FMLA, too, even if they employ fewer than 50 people.
Which Employees Are Eligible for FMLA Leave in Georgia?
As in any other state, Georgia-based employees working at covered employers are eligible for FMLA leave once they satisfy a few requirements. To be eligible for FMLA leave, they must:
- Work for a covered employer for at least 12 months.
- Have at least 1,250 hours of service with the employer during the 12 months before their FMLA leave starts.
- Work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles.
Full-time, long-tenured employees tend to satisfy these requirements easily. Part-time employees sometimes fall short of the hours-worked requirement. The third qualification is often problematic for remote workers, who often work far away from their colleagues. Many employers waive this requirement, however, granting them FMLA leave anyway.
Eligible employees who satisfy these requirements can use 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period. Employers can look at this period of time in four different ways, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
- You can consider it according to the calendar year.
- You can define a year according to any fixed 12-month period, using an employee’s start date, a fiscal year, or a 12-month period required by state law.
- You can define the year by measuring forward from the first day of an employee’s FMLA leave.
- You can measure backward from the first day of an employee’s FMLA leave. This is the most protective approach for employers. But it’s also the most difficult to track, especially if you track FMLA leave manually.
What Qualifying Reasons Allow an Employee to Take FMLA Leave?
Eligible employees in Georgia and other parts of the U.S. can take FMLA leave for a few different reasons. The FMLA allows employees to use their leave for:
- The birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth.
- The placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement.
- To care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition.
- A serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the functions of their job.
- Any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, child, or parent is a covered military member on covered active duty or call to covered active duty status.
How Much FMLA Leave Can Employees Take?
The FMLA is straightforward when it comes to its provisions. It grants eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period.
There’s one exception to this rule. When employees use the FMLA for military caregiver leave, they’re entitled to 26 workweeks of leave. Employees can use this leave to care for a current servicemember or a covered veteran with a serious injury or illness. To learn more about how the FMLA applies to employees in this situation, check out our Guide to FMLA For Military Family Members.
There are several different ways to take FMLA leave. Employees can use leave in a single block of time, taking several weeks off work at once. Employees can also use leave intermittently. Intermittent leave allows employees to apply their FMLA benefits in small amounts. An employee with chronic migraines, for example, may take a half-day several times a month to cope with symptoms.
The FMLA makes room for one more type of leave: reduced-schedule leave. A reduced schedule allows employees to work partial hours or days on a set schedule.
No matter how an employee takes FMLA leave, HR must carefully track the time they use against their 12-week entitlement. Tracking is a tricky task. When employees take leave intermittently, HR must account for every minute of their absence, subtract their time, and keep an accurate count of how much leave they have left. For more information on intermittent leave, download Intermittent Leave: A Complete HR Guide to FMLA, ADA, and Compliance.
Pay and Benefits During FMLA Leave
The leave the FMLA provides is unpaid. It does, however, guarantee employees job protection and continued group health benefits.
Confusingly, it is possible for employees to receive pay during their FMLA leave. Employers are permitted to require or allow employees to use accrued paid leave alongside the time they take off under the FMLA.
FMLA in Georgia vs. Other States: Why This Matters for Multi-State Employers
In Georgia, there are no state-level laws granting employees paid family or medical leave. Employers’ main concern is complying with the FMLA, at least when it comes to family and medical leave for employees living in Georgia.
Many states are similar to Georgia in this way. But a growing number of states are adding paid family and medical leave programs to the books. Employers with employees in states like Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington need to consider state laws that layer on top of federal provisions.
It’s risky, then, to assume every state is like Georgia. Slowly but surely, Georgia is becoming the exception, not the rule.
The patchwork of paid leave laws in the U.S. is particularly troublesome for multi-state employers. When an organization employs people in Colorado and Georgia, they must keep track of the employees who are covered by state-level leave laws and those who aren’t. Entitlement and eligibility calculations can quickly become a confusing mess in these circumstances. For employers that manage leave manually, simple mistakes or misunderstandings can lead to unnecessary delays, employee frustration, and compliance errors.
If you want to see whether your state maintains a paid family or medical leave program, use AbsenceSoft’s Leave Law Lookup.
Common FMLA Compliance Challenges for Georgia Employers
When employers in Georgia and other states need to administer FMLA leave, several common mistakes can arise. They include:
- Miscalculating employee eligibility by miscounting hours or mishandling the 12-month period.
- Inconsistent tracking of intermittent leave and reduced schedules.
- Failure to issue required paperwork, including the eligibility and rights-and-responsibility notices.
- Confusing FMLA provisions with concurrent paid leave, short-term disability policies, or workers’ compensation.
How HR Teams Can Simplify FMLA Compliance in Georgia and Beyond
Multi-state employers with workers in Georgia and elsewhere know why it’s important to use sophisticated technology to manage leave and accommodations. A purpose-built platform will reduce the risk of errors, streamline processes, and improve employee satisfaction.
This technology will also drive results for employers that don’t have to monitor state statutes. FMLA compliance has consistently ranked as HR leaders’ No. 1 challenge in the last three years of AbsenceSoft research. Even when leave managers can focus on the FMLA alone, the law is incredibly demanding. It requires detailed calculations, minute tracking, and deadline-driven paperwork.
Platforms like AbsenceSoft’s Compliance Engine (ACE) provide relief for both groups of organizations. ACE automates eligibility calculations across 200 federal and state leave laws, including the FMLA. Because it’s maintained by compliance experts, ACE tracks every change made to statutes on both the federal and state level, incorporating updates as soon as those changes become law.
The AbsenceSoft platform optimizes FMLA management for employers in Georgia and beyond. When you swap manual tracking methods for our technology, you minimize your risk of compliance error, reduce administrative burden on your leave managers, and improve the employee experience.
Refine Your FMLA Strategy With AbsenceSoft
If your organization employs workers in a state like Georgia, we have some good news: Your leave management strategy can focus on the FMLA, without accounting for complicated state-run paid leave programs.
This doesn’t mean leave management will be a cinch. FMLA compliance needs to be a top priority for your company, and compliance requires absolute adherence to the FMLA’s many rules and regulations.
That’s where technology like AbsenceSoft can help. With an automation-powered platform, your team can focus on caring for employees instead of worrying about calculation mistakes. To learn more about how AbsenceSoft can transform your company’s approach to leave management, book a demo with us today.
FAQs
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No. While employers are free to offer paid leave, they are not required to do so. Georgia does not maintain a paid family or medical leave law. Employees are covered only by the FMLA, which is a federal law granting unpaid, job-protected leave. That said, it’s important to remain aware of the growing number of states that offer paid leave programs. If your company is based in Georgia but employs people who reside in other states, they may be covered by a paid leave statute.
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Georgia’s Kin Care Law, also known as the Family Care Act, took effect in July 2017. It applies to employers with 25 or more employees that provide paid sick leave in addition to short-term or long-term disability.
It’s important to understand that this law does not require employers to provide paid sick days. Rather, it requires employers with paid sick leave policies to allow employees to use some of their entitlements to care for immediate family members.
This law does not absolve an employer from its responsibilities under the FMLA. When an employee takes unpaid FMLA leave, an employer can require an employee to use paid leave benefits. When coordinating an employer’s sick leave policy with FMLA, it is important to follow the kin care law and not bar an employee from using the sick leave for their family member even if the employer’s policy states it is for employee use only and does not cover family members.
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The FMLA’s 50/75 rule is one of the requirements employees must satisfy to be eligible for FMLA leave. This rule states that employees must work at a location where 50 employees work for an employer within 75 miles. The 50/75 rule can disqualify people who easily satisfy the law’s other eligibility requirements. Employees who work at satellite offices, small branches, or from their own home may not have 50 coworkers within 75 miles. It’s worth noting that some employers elect to waive this requirement.
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The FMLA grants employees 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period. But how should employers define those 12 months? The FMLA provides four options: calendar year, fixed 12-month period, forward-looking from first leave use, or rolling backward. Employers must choose one of these methods and apply it consistently across their entire workforce. The roll-back approach is the most protective for employers, as it prevents leave-stacking at the period boundary. But it’s also one of the more difficult approaches to track, especially if you’re tracking FMLA leave manually.
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Yes. U.S. employers are permitted by law to require or allow employees to use accrued paid leave concurrently with FMLA leave. The state of Georgia maintains no specific restriction on this topic. According to the Department of Labor, either the employer or the employee can initiate the substitution of leave. DOL has also noted that it is the employer’s responsibility to notify the employee if it requires them to use accrued paid leave concurrently with their FMLA leave.
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As in the rest of the U.S., the FMLA covers Georgia-based employers that employ 50 or more employees in 20 or more workweeks in either the current calendar year or the previous calendar year. Many small businesses will fall beneath this threshold.
This rule has some exceptions. The FMLA also covers federal, state, and local government employers, even if they employ fewer than 50 people. It also covers local educational agencies, including public and private schools, regardless of their size.