Easy FMLA Compliance for Military and Airline Expansions

Last week, you likely saw the final ruling issued by the DOL implementing FMLA expansions to military families and airline crews. Even with quite a bit of news coverage — as it coincided with the FMLA’s 20th birthday — new regulations tend to result in many, many questions. But for us, the main question we asked was, “How will these expansions impact our customers?” First, we listed out [several sources right away](http://optis.com/blog/dont-let-fmla-compliance-sneak-you) to make sure you had resources at your fingertips to stay compliant with the expansions and other new changes, but that didn’t seem like enough. We always take into consideration that in order to best serve our HR and leave management clients, we need to provide them with the best tools to serve their employees. This is the type of thinking that led to the development of our leave request intake portal shortly after the launch of LeaveXpert® in 2010. This portal was created to support situations exactly like those in the new FMLA expansions. “Enabling our military families to care for their loved ones without fear of losing their job and to actively participate in deployment, reunification and recovery reflects our deeper understanding of the role family members have in sustaining an all-volunteer force,” acting Secretary of Labor Seth D. Harris said of the new rule. ([Source.](http://blogs.hrhero.com/hrnews/2013/02/05/dol-issues-final-rule-on-fmla-expansions/)) At Optis, we feel that it’s our responsibility to support this cause by giving your employees a cloud-based portal, accessible from anywhere at any time, to make requests for family leave and military service. Additionally, when your employee is caring for a service member or actively serving our country, being able to access eligibility notifications and certification requests should be a simple process that allows them to focus on the bigger tasks at hand. The leave request intake portal is just one of the ways LeaveXpert goes the extra mile — beyond simple FMLA tracking — to provide a full leave management solution for your organization. With the goal of serving you, your employees, and our servicemen and servicewomen, we’re improving the process of going on leave for everyone involved — all while keeping your organization compliant.