What’s new?
As of October 22, 2024, employers can now use Cocoon as a one-stop source for tracking all medical and caregiver leaves, whether the employee is out for a full work day, several days or weeks, or just a few hours here and there. Cocoon Workspace Admins are now empowered to be in the driver’s seat to review supporting leave documentation and decide whether to approved or deny a leave request.
Key features
Hours tracker
Employees can report absences separate from their requested intermittent leave period
Serious health condition reviews
Admins can store the estimated frequency and duration of illness
Leave approval decisioning
Admins can approve the full leave, deny the full leave, or partially approve the leave
Admins can inform employees via Cocoon if provided proof isn’t complete or sufficient
Notifications & Documentation
Employee notification and document housing
Admin notification when supporting documentation is uploaded
Leave automation
Leave are automatically denied if the employee fails to provide any documentation
Absences within the approved intermittent leave period are automatically approved
Absences are compared to estimated frequency and duration of illness with with automatic employer notifications to review leaves if 3 or more absences due to illness that exceed the estimated frequency & duration
Absences are automatically deducted from time entitlement visible to employers
What's the benefit of these new features?
Our new intermittent medical & caregiver leave experience enables you to track leave efficiently, make informed approval/denial decisions, and communicate effectively with employees along the way. This means you can spend more time on supporting employees, and less time on manual work of tracking absences in spreadsheets or manually calculating entitlement balances.
Intermittent medical leave overview
This is the process when an employee requests to take medical leave intermittently, meaning their leave time will take place in more than one increment (returning to work in between) and may occur unpredictably.
Employees will use Cocoon to:
Request leave
Provide medical certification
Report absences
File claims, if applicable
Provide 3rd party payment checks, if the employer provides a top-up paid leave of absence policy
Cocoon Workspace Admins will:
Review serious health condition form for completeness and sufficiency; identify what may be deficient
Approve or deny leave requests
Review reported absences
Cocoon’s software will automate key parts of the process:
Eligibility determination (using information employer-provided census information, HRIS integration, and employee-provided information)
Send Eligibility and Rights & Responsibility Notices
Calculate and track time balances (based on the requested leave start date)
Send Designation Notices
Keep balances updated
Facilitate automatic email communications
Pay Updates
Pay for intermittent medical and caregiver leaves is especially tricky if an employer offers a paid leave of absence policy.
For integrated benefit deductions (e.g., accounting for paid state programs or STD), keep in mind:
Whether an insurance carrier pays out for partial wage loss due to being on an intermittent leave depends heavily on the specifics of the plan (e.g., waiting period and minimum earnings loss terms), the employee (e.g., actual duration and frequency of their absence), and any prior claims (if a new absence is related to the same reason as a prior claim filed recently).
Given Cocoon’s incomplete knowledge of your specific plan, Cocoon does not estimate STD payouts for intermittent medical or caregiver leaves. We do, however, surface STD forms to employees on their Cocoon Dashboard if they wish to apply.
State programs also vary greatly on their coverage for intermittent medical and caregiver leaves. Programs vary if they pay out for partial work day’s absence. And some paid family medical leave programs require an employee to apply to receive job-protection, even if they may not satisfy waiting period requirements for pay.
Cocoon will anticipate state benefit deductions from programs that will pay for full pay or partial day absences the employer reports in the "Benefits Deductions" of our pay file.
The following payfile columns account for hours reported
Paid Leave Hours
Paid Leave Amount $
UNPAID Leave
It's a known issue that the following columns only show the date of the first absence
UNPAID Leave Leg Start Date
UNPAID Leave Leg End Date
First Date of UNPAID Leave for Calc
Last Date of UNPAID Leave for Calc
Key terms
Leave schedule: In the context of leave of absence, a leave schedule is the general expectation for the pattern of time the employee is expected to be away from work: Continuous or Intermittent.
Continuous: the expected time away from work will be a one-time block.
E.g. an employee plans to take one block of time to welcome a new child before returning to work. Alternatively, an employee will be away from work entirely to undergo surgery and recover fully before returning to work.
Intermittent: the expected time away from work may be in multiple time blocks, including parts of a work day.
E.g. an employee is absent from work to accompany their parent or spouse undergoing chemotherapy. The employee will be at work in between those absences.
Absence: Is time away from work.
Period of intermittent leave: is the earliest possible start date of an intermittent leave of absence to the latest end date of an intermittent leave of absence. This range is an estimate and may differ from what the employee ultimately reports.
Reporting absences: Intermittent time away from work may be periodic and unpredictable. So it is more complicated to know how much time is used in connection with this leave and how much remains. Employees must record their absences throughout their leave in Cocoon to track time accurately.
Medical certification / "serious health condition" (SHC) form: a document filled out and signed by a health care provider that supports a medical need for a leave.
Reviewing medical certification for completeness: a review of the SHC to ensure all required information to approve a leave is filled.
Reviewing medical certification for sufficiency: a review of the SHC to make sure all required information to approve a leave is clear and unambiguous.
Deficient medical certification: when a required piece of information on a medical certification is unclear or not filled out
Curing a deficiency: what an employee will do by working with their health care provider to address why a medical certification was deficient.
FAQs
How does the planning process begin?
When an employee goes to plan a medical or caregiver leave in Cocoon, we will ask them if their leave will be continuous or intermittent. If they choose intermittent
Is this UX live by default or do I need to turn it on? What if I want to keep the old version?
This new experience is live, by default, for all employers who use Cocoon. This new experience is crucial to Cocoon supporting intermittent and partial-day medical or caregiver leaves, a key part of our product strategy of expanding leave access to more employees.
What happens if an employee reports an absence before they provide their supporting documents?
The absence is logged and is in a Pending state for the employer to review and approve/deny when the supporting leave documentation is reviewed.
Do I need to send my own designation notices?
No. When the leave, including any prior reported absences, are designed as “approved” or “denied”, a designation notice will be sent to the employee.
Does the full leave need to be approved or denied? What if the documentation provided only supports part of the leave?
You may approve and deny part of the requested period. And when all days are designed as “approved” or “denied”, a designation notice will be sent to the employee.
Do I need to approve every absence that an employee logs?
No. You only need to approve the leave itself and any absences that were logged before the leave was reviewed. After you approve the leave, all subsequent absences are automatically approved by default— but, you can choose to switch the approval status of any absence to be denied if you don't believe they are supported by the employee's SHC.
What happens if an employee reports more time than what was estimated by their healthcare provider?
If you tell Cocoon the estimated duration and frequency of periods of incapacity / illness, Cocoon will compare those absences with this estimated frequency and duration.
If Cocoon detects the employee has exceeded the estimated duration (by 30 minutes or more) and frequency 3 or more times in a 4 week period, we will send you an email so you may follow-up with the employee or consider a recertification.
Will Cocoon automatically ask the employee to get a recertification?
No, Cocoon does not currently automatically ask the employee for a medical recertification or a new medical annual certification.
Can an employee request or report absences for a prenatal or pre-birth disability reason?
Cocoon currently does not support intermittent leaves or absence tracking for prenatal reasons or pre-birth disability.
What status is an absence if it’s recorded after the approved intermittent leave period?
The employer will be notified and it will be pending.
The pending time will not be accounted for in entitlements until it is approved.
The absence will be included in pay files for any available employer paid policies, unless it is denied.
What increment can employees report absences?
The employee can report absences by the minute. For example, if they were absent for 34 minutes they can report in hh:mm format “00:34”.
Is it possible to limit the increment to be 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or any other duration?
It is currently not possible to enforce a minimum increment other than 1 minute.
Is it possible for an employee to report multiple absences on the same day?
Employees report the total amount of time they are absent due to appointment or illness on a particular day. This time may be inclusive of multiple absences on that day.
What’s next for our intermittent medical/caregiver leave product experience?
We’re always looking for input to improve the experience of our employers and employees. While we have several features to improve this experience already in the works, we'd love to hear from you! Please reach out to [email protected] with any feedback. For questions, please reach out to our Support Team at [email protected] and we will get back to your within 24 hours.