The article in question reported that Douglas Rydalch, a Sales Agent for Southwest Airlines, tried to bring an Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) interference case up against his former employer.
Rydalch had a back injury that would flare up on occasion, and when it did he’d take leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). While that’s all well and good, his injury seemed to flare up just before, or after, his regularly scheduled time off — particularly around public holidays.
For example: He used FMLA leave in conjunction with July 4, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, as well as around his birthday. All up, he took FMLA leave in conjunction with regular days off at least 35 times.
Understandably, Southwest were beginning to get suspicious and began to monitor Rydalch’s FMLA use. And when he again took leave on Dec. 26 and 27, they terminated him for abusing FMLA leave and violating the company’s attendance policy.
But not to be outdone, Rydalch returned serve by filing a lawsuit against Southwest for FMLA retaliation and interference.
However the case didn’t last long and a federal court quickly threw out his lawsuit – as Southwest’s thorough documentation of Rydalch’s leave requests provided them with a very strong reason to believe that he was abusing his FMLA privileges.
Therefore, the court ruled Southwest was well within its rights to terminate Rydalch.
As HR Morning advises, this case serves as a good reminder to organisations to keep accurate records of employee leave requests. Then, if leave abuse is suspected, management will be able to show in court it has legitimate reasons for taking action against the offending employee.
Read the full article here
An Employee Time and Attendance system is a powerful tool for analysing and managing employee time and attendance.
By recording unplanned absences, holidays and other leave (compassionate, parental etc...), a Time and Attendance system builds a complete Employee Absence Profile which can be viewed on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. While a Group Absence Profile allows you to analyse absence for a specific team, department or site.
By measuring the work absences of individual employees a Time and Attendance system can identify how these absences impact the organisation’s overall productivity, while real-time colour-coded reporting allows supervisors and managers to quickly identify potential problem areas and plan work schedules according to available resources, skills sets etc…
If you’d like to find out more about how an automated Time and Attendance system can reduce your company’s absence rates and boost productivity contact Mitrefinch Employee Management today on 1300 884 831 (Australia) or 09 363 9557 (NZ).
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1 comment:
Amazing post!
Managers/HR have the responsibility to monitor his staff's productivity. He should keep variety of records, including his employee's time.
One other way of monitoring not only your staff's absences but their hours of work everyday is by installing an employee monitoring software. With this, you would know how much time your staff was working on a certain task. You could also see their weaknesses and you could identify the areas that need improvements.
Using a time tracking software will make it easier not only for the HR but also for the accountant to calculate the payroll.
Just make sure to pick the software with lesser flaws and that tracks time accurately.
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