Accurate census data is extremely important for FMLA employee eligibility determinations
The employee census that is provided to Cocoon on a regular basis helps drive FMLA employee eligibility determinations in Cocoon and the explanations we provide to employees in compliance notices when it is determined that individuals are not eligible employees..
When up to date census data is not provided, Cocoon will defer to the most recent census data provided by the employer. If there is no census to fall back on, we’ll make an assumption that is more generous for the user, meaning users might be deemed eligible for leave they are not actually entitled to receive.
How Cocoon uses census data for eligibility determinations
Tenure
We use the work start date from the census and use that to determine how long an employee has worked for their current employer, as of the first date of their leave.
Leave information used:
Leave start date
Census field used:
work_start_date
Cocoon assumptions:
Cocoon assumes that each employee is continuously employed and appears on the payroll for at least some portion of each week from the date of hire, including any periods of paid or unpaid leave (sick vacation) during which other benefits or compensation are provided by the employer
Cocoon assumes there are no prior periods of employment before the
work_start_dateidentified in the census, including any potential periods of employment as a temporary agency or contract employee that might qualify as employment under applicable law.
Hours of Service
Based on the data provided in the census, Cocoon will calculate hours of service by calculating the hours worked during the twelve month period immediately preceding the employee’s leave start date (the 12-month look-back period). To accomplish this, Cocoon identifies the number of hours worked in the 12-month look-back period through the census date and then adds the hours Cocoon estimates the user will work between the census and leave start dates. In making this calculation, Cocoon assumes that the user will work the same work schedule identified in the census between the census and leave start dates (i.e., expected_weekly_hours).
Leave information used:
Leave start date
Census fields used:
work_start_datehours_worked_last_twelve_monthsexpected_weekly_hoursemployment_type
Cocoon assumptions:
We assume hours identified in the following census columns represent compensable time under the FLSA:
hours_worked_last_twelve_monthsexpected_weekly_hours
If
hours_worked_last_twelve_monthsis not provided in the census by the employer, we will assume:there are 52 working weeks in 12 months for any hours-worked calculations; and
the employee will have the same
expected_weekly_hoursthroughout the 12-month look-back period
If expected_weekly_hours is not provided in the census, we will assume a 40 hour work week for full time employees and a 30 hour work week for part time employees, based on the employment_type census column
If no census data is provided for an employee, we will assume they are full-time employees with a 40 hour work week for the purposes of hours-worked calculations. We will also rely on their self-reported work start date.
From these inputs and assumptions, we will estimate the number of hours worked in the 12-month look-back period, and determine eligibility on this criterion accordingly.
Please note that if you cannot fill out census fields and pass along ‘0’s in place of the actual data, our system will assume these are valid numbers. For example, if you cannot pull hours_worked_last_twelve_months from your HRIS system and you instead put 0 for all employees in this column, our system will automatically deem all employees ineligible for FMLA and other state programs. To avoid this erroneous determination, if you do not have the data, please leave the census column blank.
Note: expected_weekly_hours represents an employee's normal scheduled work hours per week. So Cocoon multiplies this number by the number of leave weeks provided by time entitlements and commitments to create an initial leave balance from which it deducts leave taken on either a continuous or intermittent basis. Cocoon may adjust leave balances to reflect changes in an employee's scheduled work hours during an employee's leave.
Worksite
By default, Cocoon assumes that employees meet this requirement. If employers would like to provide this information for each employee, they can do so in the worksite_fmla_eligible census column.
Census field used (if provided):
worksite_fmla_eligible
Cocoon assumptions
Cocoon assumes all employees meet this requirement unless
worksite_fmla_eligibleis provided in the census
Employment type
Cocoon will rely on the employment_type census column for determining entitlement eligibility, and default to assuming employees are full-time.
Census field used:
employment_type
Cocoon assumptions
If employment_type is not provided in the census, Cocoon will assume the employee is a full-time employee
Further reading: Employee Eligibility Basics
Although there are some variations, there are generally three basic elements of “eligibility” under federal FMLA and most state leave laws and employer policies:
(1) an employee’s length of service with an employer (we refer to this as “tenure”);
(2) an employee’s hours of service for the employer; and
(3) the size of an employee’s worksite.
To be deemed eligible, Cocoon’s workflows must determine that employees:
(a) have been employed (as of the first date of leave) by the employer for at least 12 months,
(b) have been employed (as of the first date of leave) for at least 1,250 hours of service during the 12-month period immediately preceding the commencement of the leave, and
(c) are employed (as of the date an employee gives notice of the need for leave) at a worksite where 50 or more employees are employed by the employer within 75 miles of that worksite. See FMLA regulations at 29 CFR 825.110.
The FMLA has some additional rules for determining eligibility. For example:
When measuring tenure, the 12 months an employee must have been employed by the employer need not be consecutive months; meaning employers must consider prior periods of employment for up to seven years. Prior employment beyond seven years must be counted if the employee’s period of absence from work was due to or necessitated by certain qualifying periods of active military service. If an employee is maintained on the payroll for any part of a week, including any periods of paid or unpaid leave (sick, vacation) during which other benefits or compensation are provided by the employer (e.g., workers' compensation, group health plan benefits, etc.), the week counts as a week of employment. If an employee is maintained on the payroll for any part of a week, including any periods of paid or unpaid leave (sick, vacation) during which other benefits or compensation are provided by the employer (e.g., workers' compensation, group health plan benefits, etc.), the week counts as a week of employment. When determining whether intermittent/occasional/casual employment qualifies as at least 12 months, 52 weeks is deemed to be equal to 12 months.
When measuring hours of service, whether an employee has worked the minimum 1,250 hours of service is determined according to the principles established under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for determining compensable hours of work. See 29 CFR part 785. The determining factor is the number of hours an employee has worked for the employer within the meaning of the FLSA. The determination is not limited by methods of record keeping, or by compensation agreements that do not accurately reflect all of the hours an employee has worked for or been in service to the employer. Any accurate accounting of actual hours worked under FLSA's principles may be used. If an employer does not maintain an accurate record of hours worked by an employee, including for employees who are exempt from FLSA's requirement that a record be kept of their hours worked (e.g., bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees as defined in FLSA Regulations, 29 CFR part 541), the employer has the burden of showing that the employee has not worked the requisite hours.
Usually, when measuring the size of an employee’s worksite, a worksite refers to either a single location or a group of contiguous locations. However, some employees do not have a fixed worksite. For employees with no fixed worksite, including salespersons, the worksite is the site to which they are assigned as their home base, from which their work is assigned, or to which they report. An employee's personal residence is not a worksite in the case of employees, such as salespersons, who travel a sales territory and who generally leave to work and return from work to their personal residence, or employees who work at home, as under the concept of flexiplace or telecommuting. Rather, their worksite is the office to which they report and from which assignments are made. Such complex assessments require employer input.
To determine employee eligibility in scalable software, Cocoon makes certain assumptions that occasionally might not apply in edge cases. If you believe edge cases might drive an eligibility determination that departs from Cocoon’s usual logic flow and assumptions, please contact the Support team at [email protected].
Any questions? Please reach out to the Support team at [email protected].