How to transition an employee from ADA accommodation back to FMLA
Coordinating overlapping leave types requires navigating whether to let FMLA naturally replenish while an employee uses ADA accommodations, and figuring out how to correctly restart FMLA once it becomes available again. Managing these concurrent requirements without automated tools leaves professionals stuck relying on rough spreadsheets to track everything by hand.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1continuing to provide time off as an ADA accommodation and transitioning the employee back to FMLA designation once balances roll back inDid this help you?
- 2Using a manual spreadsheetDid this help you?
- 3Running both leave types concurrently to spend down the employee's protected leave balanceDid this help you?
- 4Separating the employee after 12 weeks if the insurance provider will no longer cover inactive workersDid this help you?
- 5Choosing not to designate the leave to allow the employee to bank the protected time for later useDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“My organization appears to have a practice of choosing to not designate leave with worker’s compensation as FMLA when it would otherwise qualify.”source ↗
“Looking for some HR/leave management insight on a somewhat unique situation.”source ↗
“Have you allowed an employee to continue receiving intermittent time off as an ADA accommodation after exhausting FMLA, and then transitioned them back to FMLA as their entitlement became available again?”source ↗
“Is there any potential issue with allowing the employee to use the ADA accommodation rather than FMLA during the period when FMLA is exhausted, essentially allowing their FMLA balance to naturally replenish?”source ↗
“Im interested because I don't designate comp leave as FMLA so I looked into it more and found this:”source ↗
“Because we cannot afford to have someone out on workers comp for 12 weeks and then again onFMLA for 12 weeks. We don’t have enough depth on the bench to cover most people’s jobs for 6 months or more.”source ↗
Where this came up
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