FMLA Absence Plans and Absence Types

You track data for Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) compliance at the absence plan level. You must associate every absence plan with an absence type to track the entitlement for FMLA.

FMLA Absences

The processes for viewing, editing, tracking, reporting, and otherwise managing FMLA eligible absences are the same as for any other type of absence. You use an FMLA absence plan to track FMLA-eligible absences and provide the protected status.

Your Payroll and HR departments must work together to create absences, absence plans, and absence types.

For further info, see Setting Up Absence Elements for Oracle Fusion Absence Management (2308118.1) on My Oracle Support.

FMLA Protected Status

FMLA dictates that an absence has protected status during time-off even when that absence affects payroll processing. For example, short-term disability (STD) or maternity leave can affect payroll processing because they may be paid absences. The FMLA absence plan running concurrently protects the status of the employee during both paid and unpaid absences.

To assign protected status to an absence, you must configure concurrent absence plans and absence types.

For example, you could set up the following plans.

• An FMLA plan to track FMLA-eligible time off

• An STD plan to track the time-off and pay STD benefits

You must configure the STD absence element in payroll and add it to the STD absence plan. The STD element is the primary source of absence info for payroll processing.

Absence Type Definition

An absence type is a grouping of absences, such as illness or personal business. They are used for:

• Reporting

• Accrual of hours reported

• Compensation calculations

For example, you can concurrently track both paid maternity leave and FMLA leave. An employee is entitled to 6 weeks paid maternity leave and 12 weeks FMLA leave. After 12 weeks the absence record would show 6 weeks paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of FMLA leave. You could also attach the FMLA plan to another plan such as a short-term disability (STD) plan.

This example assumes that you have already created your Maternity plan and your FMLA plan.

To create an absence type for maternity leave:

1. From My Client Groups, click Absences.

2. Click Absence Types.

3. Click Create.

4. Select your legislation, and specify the generic absence pattern.

5. On Types Attribute, enter a name for the absence, such as Maternity Leave, and set the status to Active.

6. Specify the Plan UOM as weeks.

7. Use the default values for the other fields.

8. Click Save and Close.

Absence Plan and Absence Type Association

You can associate multiple absence plans with an absence type, or add one absence plan to many absence types as needed. The absence plan tracks the qualified entitlement cohesively. Associating absence plans with absence types let you use different absence plan hours within the same absence type, in the priority that you indicate.

For details about creating a qualification plan, see Absence Plans for FMLA Benefits in the Help Center.

To associate two concurrent qualification plans with an FMLA absence type:

1. Start Absence Types task.

2. Search for the Maternity Leave absence type you just created and open it for editing.

3. Click Plans and Reasons.

4. Click Select and Add.

5. Select the maternity qualification plan, and set it to Active with a priority of 10.

6. Click OK.

7. Click Select and Add.

8. Select the FMLA qualification plan, and set it to Active with a priority of 20.

9. Click OK.

10. Save your work.