Q&A: Does Workers Comp Count against FMLA?

Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the people processes podcast where we dive deep into the tools, laws, and yes processes that you need to scale and grow your people processes. I'm your host, Rhamy Alejeal, and I'm the CEO of People Processes. My company helps organizations all across the United States streamline, optimize, implement, and revolutionize their HR operations. We've helped hundreds of companies and thousands of HR leaders across the world get their people processes right. Today, we're going to be answering some questions that have been submitted either by our clients or through our social media. Please check us out over at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. You can find the links at peopleprocesses.com where you can ask any questions like these that are going to come up in our Q&A today. Specifically, we're gonna be talking about FMLA and workers' compensation. We're going to be talking about required religious holidays and a few more topics. Before we dive too deep, though, I want to ask you, please subscribe to our podcast. You can find us on iTunes, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, pretty much any pod catcher of your choice. You can also subscribe at peopleprocesses.com which will give you exclusive subscriber only content.Now let's dive in. Okay. First question.Are employers required to grant employees time off from work for religious holidays?That's a good question. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It says that covered employers must make a reasonable accommodations for employees religious observances. So if you fall under title 7, which generally applies to employers with 15 or more employees, though many state laws create similar obligations for smaller employers. But at a federal level, 15 or more, you fall under the title 7 of the CRA. The act clearly States that, an accommodation for an employee's religion must be made. The only way you're out of that is, if the employer can demonstrate that they are unable to reasonably accommodate the religious observance without undue hardship. So that means upon request, you would open a file, you would look at it, you would say, this is the request, this is the burden on the company. We cannot support that burden. That burden is undue.According to the EEOC, an accommodation may cause undue hardship if it is costly compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees or requires other employees to do more than their fair share of more than their share, no fair of potentially hazardous or burdensome work. So the way I would do it if you're a smaller company and you're worried about this. Request, wants religious holiday, employee name, date of request, who was requested to a manager name or whatever. And then the HR or a small company business owner stick this definition right there at the top. EEOC says this and then determination. This would or would not cause undue burden. And then resolution granted leave. One thing to know. Federal law does not require employers to compensate employees at all for time taken off in observance of a religious holiday practice or belief. So if you don't have a PTO policy or something like that, you can let them off unpaid. However, an employer must offer the same options for religious holiday requests as it does for other time off requests. So you have to let them use their PTO if they're going to use that, whether it's vacation or personal leave, those sorts of things. Hope that answers your question. Again, start a file. Do your EOC check on undue burden. Make your determination. You do have to check it though.Okay. Next question.Can...